In Their Own Words: Edith Sheffer

(November 10, 2011) History professor Edith Sheffer discusses how she conducts research that examines social and cultural change in 20th century Germany. She examines the role that German citizens played in perpetuating the physical boundaries that separated them.

Stanford University:
http://www.stanford.edu/

Human Experience at Stanford:
http://humanexperience.stanford.edu/

Stanford University Channel on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/stanford

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Humanities
• History
• Culture
• Democracy
• Communism
• Cold War
• Europe
• World War II
• Research
• Scholar
• 20th Century
• East
• West
• Germany
• Berlin Wall
• Social Change
• Cultural Perspective
• Physical
• Boundaries
• Iron Culture
• Transition
• Burned Bridged

[sowcratees]

"History is bunk."

Henery Ford

There is such pressure to avoid any moral or political bias that it appears to me too biased toward no bias.

[mcdonal3]

Nicely presented research. Fascinating topic -- that germans would change their ways of thinking about each other in the span of a few years.

Just one thought: At about 7:00 marker she talks about a phenomenon that she says is hard to understand -- that west germans lobbied American military for security against east germans. Why does she say she finds that hard to understand when that describes the mindset in her own backyard, California, when they talk about their neighbor Mexico?

[GoldXf]

This was a satisfying intellectual meal, but has only fueled my curiosity's hunger even more; I know that in America, we analyze our country's history as well as world history in public schools, and I desire to know if European countries teach their own national history as well, along with how they teach their national history. Does anybody here have any knowledge on the subject?

[koalabearsarecute]

Wow