Maria Höhn
Associate Professor of History
Office: Swift Hall, room 38B
Phone: (845) 437-5677
Hours: By appointment only
Maria Höhn has been teaching at Vassar since 1996. Her research is focused on the American military presence in Germany after WWII, and the encounter of Germans and Americans. She teaches classes in History, American Culture and Jewish Studies.
Höhn has published numerous articles in both the United States and Germany on the topics of Americanization, German gender politics after the war, German attitudes toward race and antisemitism in the postwar years, and the interaction of German and American forms of racism. Her book, GIs and Fräuleins. The German American Encounter in 1950s West Germany, (UNC Press, 2002), was published in German in 2008 with Verlag Berlin Brandenburg under the title, Amis, Cadillacs, “Negerliebchen. GIs im Nachkriegsdeutschland. She co-edited, together with Seungsook Moon, a volume that compares the impact of U.S. military bases on gender and race relations in West Germany, South Korea and Japan. Over There. Living with the U.S. Military Empire is forthcoming with Duke University Press. Together with Martin Klimke, Höhn is currently writing a history of the experience of African American soldiers, activists and intellectuals in Germany during the 20th century, entitled From DuBois to Obama: The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIs, and Germany. Her collaboration with Martin Klimke has also resulted in an educational website and archive related to that topic (http://aacvr-germany.org/). Höhn has also served as a historical consultant and co-narrator for two German television productions on the impact of the American military on Germany society.
For her research project and digital archive The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIs, and Germany, Höhn and colleague Martin Klimke have been honored by the NAACP with its 2009 Julius E. Williams Distinguished Community Service Award.