Natalie Scholz is Assistant Professor (tenured) of modern and contemporary history at the historical department of the University of Amsterdam. She has done her Ph.D. at the University of Münster, Germany. Previously, she worked as a Humboldt guestresearcher at the Free University Amsterdam and as a Lise-Meitner-fellow at the University of Cologne. She held a research fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study Konstanz in 2012 and at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in 2013-14.

Personal research statement

My research focusses on the cultural history of the political in modern Europe (France and Germany) with a special interest in popular representations, including visual, material and memory culture. I have published on the imaginations of the restoration monarchy in early nineteenth century France and more recently on the connection between commodity culture and the political in the postwar period. In my work, I try to understand the culturally and emotionally mediated intersection between modern political regimes and national, ethnic and gender identities.

Currently I am finishing a book manuscript entitled: Redeeming Objects. A West German Mythology (1945-1960).

Research interests

Cultural history of the political in 19th and 20th century Europe (especially France and Germany), symbolic representations, material culture, memory studies, gender history, visual culture and film.

Recent publications

‘Grauzone des Heroischen. Der Volkswagen als Gründungsmythos’, Die Neue Rundschau 1 (2021), special issue Braucht Demokratie Helden?

Ghosts and Miracles. The Volkswagen as Imperial Debris in Postwar West Germany (Comparative Studies in Society and History 62:3, 2020, open access).

Recent lecture

“The Un/Homeliness of Postwar Cosmopolitanism. The Case of West Germany”, keynote lecture, international colloquium “Aesthetics in the Center IV. Aesthetics of Travel”, June 21, 2021, Brasília (online).

Books 

Reviews

Tim Blanning, English Historical Review, April 2008 : 

"How to legitimate the monarchy in Restoration France is the subject of this imaginative and stimulating dissertation. (...) This is an important, original, scholarly and well-written monograph that should attract the attention of all historians working on French history of theperiod 1770-1830."

Jens Ivo Engels, sehepunkte, September 2006:

"Die Studie widmet sich einem spannenden und viel versprechendenThema, das in der Monarchieforschung bisher erstaunlicherweise recht wenig Beachtung gefunden hat. (...) Insgesamt ergibt sich das Bild einer materialreichen, in sich schlüssig argumentierenden und in weiten Teilenüberzeugenden Arbeit, die einen bemerkenswerten Beitrag zur Geschichte der Monarchie im 19. Jahrhundert leistet."

genus (ed.), Kultur, Geschlecht, Körper, Münster: agenda-Verlag 1999 (as co-editor).

2021/22

Semester 2

Western Civilization. Exploring the history of a contested concept  (master elective)

Wetenschapsfilosofie Historische wetenschappen (BA)

Geschiedfilosofie