Contact
Email:
jennifer.allen@yale.edu
Jennifer Allen is an associate professor of modern European history at Yale University. Her research and teaching focus on the history of modern Germany with an emphasis on cultural history, the theories and practices of memory, counterculture and grassroots activism, and environmentalism. Her first book, Sustainable Utopias: The Art and Politics of Hope in Germany (Harvard University Press, 2022), charts Germany’s postwar efforts to revitalize the concept of utopia. She's currently working on a new book project, "Insurance Against Total Destruction: A Postwar History of German Plans to Save the World," that analyzes postwar German efforts to archive the raw materials needed to rebuild national and international cultures after total catastrophe. Allen’s other work has appeared in the Journal of Modern History, Central European History, German History, Journal of Urban History, and H-Diplo. Her research has been supported by, among others, the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung, Volkswagen and Mellon Foundations, American Academy in Berlin, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, and DAAD. She received her PhD in 2015 from the University of California, Berkeley.
Project: Nourishing the Future: Gene Banking Against Catastrophe in the Global South
Publications:
- Sustainable Utopias: The Art and Politics of Hope in Germany. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022.
- with Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, Christina Morina, and Patrice Poutrus. “Forum: The Unexpectedness of Events: GDR-Born Academics on Becoming Historians after 1989/90.” Central European History 53, no. 3 (2020): 636–651.
- “National Commemoration in an Age of Transnationalism.” Journal of Modern History 91, no. 1 (March 2019): 109–148.
- “Against the 1989/90 Ending Myth.” Central European History 52, no. 1 (March 2019): 125–147.
- “Berlin Remains.” Journal of Urban History 45, no. 6 (2019): 1283–1291.