College: Newnham
Email: clc74@cam.ac.uk
Supervisor: Prof Sarah Colvin
Research Topic: Activist intellectuals and debates on left-wing political violence in 1970s West Germany
Research
During the 1970s, left-wing intellectuals, especially writers and academics, were regarded as ‘sympathisers’ by the right-wing CDU/CSU alliance and the media for their supposed affinities with the Red Army Faction. My research focuses on what motivated activist intellectuals to intervene in debates on left-wing political violence in West Germany, often at high personal cost. I am especially interested in the discrepancy between which intellectuals (such as Heinrich Böll) were regarded with the most suspicion, and which intellectuals were, in fact, the most politically involved on the ground, for example in campaigns for imprisoned members of the radical left. By examining this discrepancy, it is possible to improve our understanding of both the domestic public sphere and the status of West German democracy in the Cold War era.
Scholarships/Prizes
Hanseatic Scholarship for Britons, 2021-22
Runner-up, Women in German Studies Postgraduate Essay Prize, 2020 (essay published in German Life and Letters, see below)
Newnham College Major Studentship for PhD, 2018-21
German Department Tiarks Fund for PhD, 2018-21
Teaching
Lecturer and supervisor for the ‘Red Decade’ module on paper Ge13: Aspects of German-speaking Europe since 1945 (2019-21)
Translation teacher on paper GEB2 (2020-21)
Available for supervision of undergraduate translation projects and final-year dissertations
Conference papers
Co-convenor of panel: ‘German Authors as Public Intellectuals since 1945’ at the 44th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Washington D.C. (held online in late 2020)
Paper presented: ‘Am Beispiel Peter-Paul Zahl: Authors, justice and political violence in 1970s West Germany’
‘Party politics, public intellectuals and West German left-wing terrorism during the 1970s,’ given at the Women in German Studies Conference, University College Dublin in November 2019
‘West German left-wing terrorism, political prisoner rhetoric and the assertion of international significance (1971-96),’ given at the White Rose International History and International Relations Seminar, University of Leeds in March 2019
‘The 2nd June Movement and Inge Viett’s self-identification as a political prisoner (1971-96),’ given at the Contemporary History Workshop, Faculty of History, Cambridge in March 2018
‘Frauenmacht und Feminismusverdacht: How the Rote Zora resists and enlightens our post-9/11 understanding of terrorism,’ given at the Cambridge Undergraduate German Conference in January 2016.
Publications
Articles
‘Prisoners of the World Unite: The Internationalism of the 2nd June Movement from Berlin Moabit Prison’ in German History (forthcoming in late 2022).
‘Protecting the Public Sphere(s): The Campaign for Peter-Paul Zahl’ in German Life and Letters, Volume 75, Issue 1 (2022).
Book reviews
Review of Tiffany N. Florvil, Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement, in H-German, H-Net Reviews (October 2021). <https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=56764>.
Double review of Marco Abel and Christina Gerhardt (eds.), Celluloid Revolt: German Screen Cultures and the Long 1968 (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2019), and Christina Gerhardt and Sara Saljoughi (eds.), 1968 and Global Cinema (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2018) in German Studies Review, Volume 43, Issue 1 (2020).
Review of Mia Lee, Utopia and Dissent in West Germany: The Resurgence of the Politics of Everyday Life in the Long 1960 (London: Routledge, 2019), in The Modern Language Review, Volume 115, Issue 2 (2020).
Review of Kimberly Mair, Guerrilla Aesthetics: Art, Memory, and the West German Urban Guerrilla (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016) in German Politics and Society, Volume 36, Issue 3 (2018).
Other activities and roles
Co-convenor, German Graduate Research Seminar (2019-20)
Mentor for speakers at the Cambridge Undergraduate German Conference
