Associate Professor of History
Office: Swift 38B
Phone: 437-5677
Contact Maria Höhn
Born and raised in West Germany Maria Höhn has been living in the United States since 1983. In 1991, she graduated from Millersville State University and attended the University of Pennsylvania as a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities. The focus of her doctoral studies was modern German history, European cultural history, and European women's history. After receiving her Ph.D. in 1995, she taught at the University of Pennsylvania for one year. Since the fall of 1996 she has been teaching at Vassar College.
In her book GIs and Fräuleins. The German American Encounter in 1950s West Germany, (UNC Press, 2002), Höhn shows how West German society modernized during the 1950s. She was particularly interested in studying how generational, class and gender differences impacted decisions about the new democracy and American popular culture. Her book also explores how Germans dealt with their Nazi past, and to what degree racism and antisemitism remained crucial categories in which Germans debated a new national identity.
Höhn has given numerous papers and published 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. She 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. Her new research project explores the collaboration between German students and African American GIs in the anti-Vietnam and civil rights struggle.