Prof. Dr. Hubertus Büschel (born 1969 in Weidach near Coburg) studied history, Latin and German studies in Munich and Berlin. Since April 2019, he has been Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Kassel. From September 2015 until the end of March 2019, he was Chair of Contemporary History at the University of Groningen (RUG) in the Netherlands. There he was also Director of Studies for the Research Master "Modern History and International Relations" between 2016 and 2019. In 2015, Hubertus Büschel received a Heisenberg Fellowship from the German Research Foundation (DFG). From 2009 to 2015, he was Junior Professor of Cultural History at the Justus Liebig University Giessen and at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) there. In 2012, he completed his habilitation at JLU Giessen with a study on the history of German development cooperation in Tanzania, Togo, and Cameroon. His 2004 dissertation (summa cum laude, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) takes a look at the cult of German monarchs between 1770 and 1830. From 2001 to 2004, Hubertus Büschel worked as a research assistant and doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for History, Göttingen.

 Wintersemester 2022/23

 

Previous Teachings

Summersemester 2022

Wintersemester 2021/22

 Sommersemester 2021

Wintersemester 2020/21

Summersemester 2020

Wintersemester 2019/20

Summersemester 2019

"Trauma in the Tropics. Global History, 'Experiences of Modernization' and Psychiatry in the 19th and 20th Centuries."

Based on empirical historical research, the project takes a look at global negotiations of concepts of 'modernization' in anthropological, psychological and psychiatric knowledge cultures between Europe and regions of the 'global South'. Discourses and practices about the supposed traumatization of so-called 'primitive people' in tropical and subtropical regions of the world are analyzed, which revolved around the assumption that and how they became mentally ill through 'experiences of modernization' in the course of 'civilization', 'missionization' or 'development'. In this context, the assumption that one could draw conclusions about European forms of psychiatric 'civilization diseases' and their therapies from the conditions in Africa, Latin America or Southeast Asia, which was held by many researchers at that time, will also be analyzed.

The project as a whole consists of three subprojects: First, a monograph will focus on the interweaving histories of 'modernization experiences' and psychiatry between regions of tropical Africa and Europe. Second, a workshop was held in Groningen in November 2018 to provide a forum for debating current approaches to global histories of psychiatry (see the announcement: Global Histories of Psychiatry, 07.11.2018 - 08.11.2018 Groningen, in: H-Soz-Kult, 11.10.2018, and conference report: Global Histories of Psychiatry, 07.11.2018 - 08.11.2018 Groningen, in: H-Soz-Kult, 19.03.2019). Third, an edited volume will be published on this workshop.

Overall, the project aims to make a new contribution to global histories of the interconnectedness of psychiatric discourses and practices, with reference to contemporary reflections on the effects of 'modernization'. In doing so, the project will attempt to focus as comprehensively as possible on the perspectives of all participants, thus including psychiatric patients. A contribution to the global circulation and 'translation' of anthropological and psychiatric knowledge will be made, whereby the project will not only attempt to show how normative definitions of 'modernization' were negotiated, substantiated, rejected and questioned in local as well as global entanglements. It will also ask about stereotypes, racist 'othering', social exclusion and inclusion, and, last but not least, physical and psychological violence in processes of psychiatric knowledge negotiation. Thus, the project will also ask to what extent, how, and how consequential European 'modernization' was conceived as an elitist concept that was withheld from people with the argument that the effects of 'modernization' would make them mentally ill.

 

Global History in Practice - Historical Anthropology as Global History

Four sub-projects are planned under this working title: First, the approach of historical anthropology will be critically reviewed within the framework of a monograph; through this, a postcolonial redefinition and an opening of this approach for global historical concepts and thematic fields will be achieved. Secondly, an interdisciplinary and international workshop will take place, in which appropriately qualified historians can exchange their research experiences with ethnologists and sociologists, primarily in so-called developing and newly industrialized countries. Thirdly, a volume of essays will be prepared. Fourth, an Internet platform will be created to provide orientation for planning and conducting global history research - especially in regions of the so-called global South. All in all, this should provide young scholars with more orientation and support for practical global history research than has been the case to date.

Monographs

  • Untertanenliebe - Der Kult um deutsche Monarchen 1770-1830 (=Publications of the Max Planck Institute for History, vol. 220), Göttingen 2006.
  • Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe - Deutsche Entwicklungsarbeit in Afrika 1960-1975 (= Globalgeschichte, vol. 16), Frankfurt/M. 2014.
  • Hitler's Noble Diplomat. Der Herzog von Coburg und das Dritte Reich, Frankfurt/M. 2016.
  • The Rorschach Test Travels Around the World: Global Stories from Ethnopsychoanalysis, Vienna, Berlin 2021. (Review: https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/frrec/article/view/89326).

 

Collected volumes/thematic issues

  • together with Daniel Speich (ed.), Entwicklungswelten - Zur Globalgeschichte der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit (= Globalgeschichte, vol. 6), Frankfurt/M., New York 2009.
  • Together with Daniel Speich (ed.), Development Work and Global Modernization Expertise. History and Society 41.4 (2015).

 

Essays

  • Vor dem Altar des Vaterlandes - Verfahren ritueller Sakralisierung von Monarch und Staat zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts, in Florian Steger (ed.), Kultur: ein Netz von Bedeutungen. Analysen zur symbolischen Kulturanthropologie, Würzburg 2002, 161-183.
  • Entgrenzte Heimat - "Emotives" im deutsch-deutschen Herbst 1989, in: Bettina von Jagow, Florian Steger (eds.), Differenzerfahrung und Selbst. Bewußtsein und Wahrnehmung in Literatur und Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts, Heidelberg 2003, 195-209.
  • "Shrinking Psychohistory" - Psychoanalysis and the Study of History: the USA and (West) Germany, in: Rebekka Habermas, Rebekka von Mallinckrodt (eds.), Intercultural Transfer and National Stubbornness. European and Anglo-American Positions in Cultural Studies, Göttingen 2004, 123-140.
  • The love of the duke? Coburg subjects and their rulers in the early 19th century, in: Jahrbuch der Coburger Landesstiftung 50 (2005), 1-23.
  • Kissing Hands on Command. Luise von Preußen: Lange wurde sie wie eine Heilige verehrt, in: Rheinischer Merkur 61,17 (2006), 10.
  • The Gentle Power of the Powerless - Rituals, Congratulations and Gifts: Prussia's Subjects and Their Kings around 1800, in Historical Anthropology 15 (2007), 82-102.
  • Die volkseigenen Akten - Materielle und discursive 'Spuren' staatlicher Archive der DDR, in Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften (ÖZG) 18 (2007), 35-56.
  • Im Tropenkoller - Hybride Männlichkeit(en) in ethnological texts 1900-1960, in: Ulrike Brunotte, Rainer Herrn (eds.), Produktion und Krise hegemonialer Männlichkeit in der Moderne, Bielefeld 2008, 241-256.
  • A Memorial to the Forgotten War - the Korean War Memorial in Washington D.C., in: Christoph Kleßmann, Bernd Stöver (eds.), Der Koreakrieg. Wahrnehmung - Wirkung -Erinnerung, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2008, 192-207.
  • Helping in Africa. Actors of West German "Development Aid" and East German "Solidarity" 1955-1975, in Archiv für Sozialgeschichte (AfS) 48 (2008), 333-365.
  • "Starke Angst in den Tropen" - Masculinity and Crisis in Ethnological Texts 1900-1960, in: Martin Sabrow (ed.), Potsdamer Almanach 2007, Potsdam 2008.
  • Development Cooperation and Western Values in Africa - On the History of a Complex Relationship, in: Helmut Reifeld (ed.), Jenseits der Millenniumsziele. Value Orientation for Future Development Policy, St. Augustin, Berlin 2009, 99-106.
  • Helping in Africa. Actors of West German "Development Aid" and East German "Solidarity" 1955-1975, in Anja Kruke (ed.), Decolonization. Prozesse und Verflechtungen 1945-1990, Bonn 2009, 333-365 (reprinted from AfS 48 (2008), 333-365).
  • together with Daniel Speich, Introduction - Conjunctures, Problems and Perspectives of the Global History of Development Cooperation, in: Hubertus Büschel, Daniel Speich (eds.), Entwicklungswelten - Zur Globalgeschichte der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit (= Globalgeschichte Bd. 6), Frankfurt/M., New York 2009, 7-29.
  • Eine Brücke am Mount Meru - Zur Globalgeschichte von Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe und Gewalt in Tanganjika, in: Hubertus Büschel, Daniel Speich (eds.), Entwicklungswelten - Zur Globalgeschichte der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit (= Globalgeschichte Bd. 6), Frankfurt/M., New York 2009, 175-206.
  • History of Development Policy, Version: 1.0, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 11. 2.2010.
  • Das Schweigen der Subalternen - Die Entstehung der Archivkritik im Postkolonialismus, in: Anja Horstmann, Vanina Kopp (eds.), Archiv - Macht-Wissen. Organization and Construction of Knowledge and Realities in Archives, Frankfurt/M. 2010, 73-88.
  • The Morality of Experts: Crisis and Reform in West German "Development Aid" and East German "Solidarity" in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, in Journal für Entwicklungspolitik (JEP). Austrian Journal of Development Studies 3 (2010), 29-49.
  • Austerity and Precaution as Techniques of Human Management in Tropical Africa, 1920-1975, in: Journal of Cultural Studies (ZfK) 1 (2011), 55-71.
  • International History as Global History - Premises, Potentials and Problems, in: Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, online edition 8 (2011), H. 3.
  • 'The Native Mind' - Racism in 'Humanitarian' Development Studies on Sub-Saharan Africa 1920-1940, in: Werkstatt Geschichte 59 (2011), 35-54.
  • Together with Frank Bösch, Transnational and Global Perspectives as 'Travelling Concepts in the Study of Culture', in: Birgit Neumann, Ansgar Nünning (eds.), Travelling Concepts for the Study of Culture, Berlin, 2012, 371-388.
  • "Helping People to Help Themselves" - An Endless Misunderstanding. Of the history of "development aid" and what can be learned from it, in Evangelische Zeitung für die Kirche in Norddeutschland 15 (2013), 6-7.
  • Differentiated Theses and the Art of Storytelling, in: Hundertvierzehn. Das literarische Online-Magazin des S. Fischer Verlag.
  • Butterfly from Berlin's Ashes: The Ambiguity of the Cultural Expression of Emotions - A Commentary, in: Ethnologia Europeaea. Journal of European Ethnology 45,2 (2015), 111-114.
  • Together with Daniel Speich, Introduction: development work and global modernization expertise, in History and Society 41,4 (2015), 535-551.
  • "Modernity Makes Them Insane!" Primitivism Attribution, Modernization Experience, Development Work, and Global Psychiatry in the 20th Century, in History and Society 41.4 (2015), 685-717.
  • The Invention of The Third World and the Geopolitics of Dependence and Development, in Matthias Middell (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Transregional Studies, London 2018, 131-138.
  • Beyond the Colonial Shadow? Delinking, Border Thinking, and Theoretical Futures of Cultural History, in Doris Bachmann-Medick, Jens Kugele, Ansgar Nünning (eds.), Futures of the Study of Culture. Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Global Challenges, Berlin 2020, 123-138.
  • Ad Hoc NGOs, Structural Failure and the Politics of Silence. Stories about Development from a Village in Togo Afterword, in: Melina Kalfelis, Kathrin Knodel (eds.), NGOs and Lifeworlds in Africa. Transdisciplinary Perspectives, New York, Oxford 2021, 310-321 (in press).
  • Reviews in Historical Anthropology, Studies Review, American Historical Review, Sehepunkte, H-Soz-Kult.

 

Dissertations (ongoing).

  • Ebbe Volquardsen, Narratives of a Humane Danish Colonialism: Greenland and the "Danish West Indies" in History and Literature since the 19th century.
  • Christoph Plath, The Contested Utopia. Solidarity rights and the conflictual globalization of human rights in the 1970s
  • Sarah Stein, Cultural Relations between West Africa and France. Film-making in the context of decolonization
  • Gerd Strauß, Denazification in Eschwege

 

Dissertations (completed)

  • Anette Cremer, Mon Plaisier. The Ideal Life of Auguste-Dorothea von Schwarzburg-Arnstadt. - The doll city in the field of tension between female self-representation and art chamber piece (Giessen, 2012, second opinion).
  • Andreas Hübner, Migration, Forced Migration, Creolization, and Slavery in the Sign of Global Crisis: The Historical Space of the Lower Mississippi Delta as a Fracture Zone of Globalization, 1770-1820 (Giessen, 2014, First Opinion).
  • Christina Norwig, The European Youth Campaign 1951-1958 (Göttingen, 2014, second opinion).
  • Glory Lueong, The Forest Space, Identity Crises and Cultural Conflicts in the South Region of Cameroon: The Case of the Baka Pygmies in the Face of Conservation Policies and Strategies (Giessen, 2014, second opinion).
  • Laura Fahnenbruck, Ein(ver)nehmen. Sexuality and Everyday Life of Wehrmacht Soldiers in the Occupied Netherlands (Groningen, 2015, third opinion).
  • Robert Stock, Overseas or Liberation War? Media Representations of the War of Decolonization in Mozambique and Portugal (Giessen, 2016, first refereed).
  • Jonny van Hove, African American Discourses on the 'Congo' in the Long Sixties (1955-1975): A Discourse Analysis of the Narratives and Interests of African American Intelligentsia (Groningen, 2017, first supervision).
  • Guido van Hengel, We, of tomorrow: A History of the Young Bosnian Student Networks (Groningen, 2017, third-party review).
  • Benjamin Brendel, Constructing 'Modern' Societies. Nation-(re-)building and the presentation of dam-building under F. D. Roosevelt, Franco, and Nasser (Giessen, 2017, second opinion).
  • Melina Kalfelis, "NGOs as Lifeworlds. Interconnections and Antagonisms in the Everyday Work of Development Actors in Burkina Faso" (Frankfurt/M., 2019, Zweitgutachten).
  • Marcel Glaser, Peter Koller - Der Architekt der Stadt des KdF-Wagens. Eine Biographie (Zweitgutachten).

 

Habilitations (ongoing)

  • Dr. Cornelius Torp, Klavierwelten. Rise and Transformation of a European Culture, 1830-1940
  • Dr. Karolin Wetjen, Thinking on a Global Scale. Imagining the Future of the Global in Environmental Debates, 1870-1970.