Transatlantic Encounters in History of Education

In the last twenty years, transnational perspectives have gained momentum in the field of historical-educational research. Scholars have made substantial efforts to rethink nation-based historiographies by reconstructing and reinterpreting the cross-border encounters and intertwined processes that have turned the history of education into a transnational enterprise. A closer look at specific transnational spaces furthers a better understanding of these processes. Against this backdrop, the book offers case studies focusing on transatlantic encounters with special regard to the manifold entanglements between Germany and the United States of America that represent one of the most complex, dynamic, and vivid educational spaces between the eighteenth and twentieth century. Drawing on excellent source material, each contribution examines interaction processes as the genuine transformative moment within any cross-border transfer, and investigates exchanges of concepts, institutions, and materials. Under this premise, the book draws attention to shifting trajectories in the German-American history of education that can be identified by focusing on long-lasting transnational entanglements. By offering a wide range of research approaches, the publication furthermore contributes innovative methodological thoughts to transnational histories of education that go beyond the German-American context and will interest students, emerging researchers, and experts of history of education.

Fanny Isensee is research assistant and PhD student at the History of Education Department at the Institute of Education Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Andreas Oberdorf is permanent lecturer in theory and history of education and supervisor of the research library of the Center for German-American Educational History at the Institute of Education, University of Münster, Germany. Daniel Töpper is research assistant and PhD student at the History of Education Department at the Institute of Education Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Volume Introduction: Reconceptualizing German-American Encounters in History of Education. Thematic Introduction: The Transnational in the History of Education 1. Educating Ebenezer: A Transfer from the Glaucha Institutions to Colonial Georgia? 2. "The School Gives Us Hope for Better Times": Pastors from Halle and the Education of Their German-Lutheran Congregations in Pennsylvania, 1745-1800 3. The Hallensian Pastor John Christopher Kunze (1744-1807) and His Attempts at Establishing a Preacher Seminary in North America 4. "The State's First Duty": Public Education and the Liberal Conundrum in American Educational Reports from Germany 5. The Intercultural Transfer of Knowledge and Concepts About Higher Education: George Ticknor's Travel Logs from His Study Stay in Germany, 1815-1817 6. George Ticknor in Göttingen: An Impact of German Comparative Constitutional Thought on American Education, 1816-1836 7. Samuel Adler in New York: Nineteenth-Century Jewish Education in Transatlantic and Translational Perspective 8. "The Past and Present State of Education, in the United States, and in Foreign Countries": Foreign Educational Systems in US Educational Periodicals, 1830-1890 9. SurFacing the TransAtlantic: The Body as Means of Travel, 1839-1910 10. But Can the Farm Travel?: Translating Knowledge from Germany to the United States in Late-Nineteenth-Century Agricultural Education 11. American and German Research Universities Between the Beginning and End of the German Reich 12. Objects That Work: Monroe's "Cyclopedia of Education," Its Reception of German References and Thoughts on Objects as Actors 13. Nature and the "Kehrt zur Natur zurück": German Influences on the School Camping Movement in the United States, 1920-1950 14. Harvard-Bauhaus Pedagogy: Walter Gropius's and Joseph Hudnut's Dispute on Bauhaus Pedagogy at the Graduate School of Design, 1937-1952 15. Internationalization in Teacher Education: Transfer of Knowledge and Culture Stimulated by the German-American Fulbright Scholarship Program for Teachers, 1952-1974. Perspectives on Transnational and Transatlantic Research in History of Education: A Round Table Discussion on Its State of the Art, Challenges, and Future Directions