Dr Caroline Pearce
Lecturer in German and Interpreting; Coordinator BA Modern Languages and Interpreting (on maternity leave until November 2011)
email : c.pearce@sheffield.ac.uk
I studied French and German at Oxford University (BA, MA) and then completed a postgraduate diploma in Interpreting and Translating at the University of Bath. Subsequently, I worked for two years as a translator at the European Institute of Public Administration in Maastricht, where I also learnt Dutch. I returned to the UK to undertake postgraduate research at the Institute for German Studies (IGS) at Birmingham University, including a two-year period in Berlin. My MPhil thesis (2000) dealt with Vergangenheitsbewältigung in post-war West Germany and my PhD thesis (2005) assessed debates and controversies on the Nazi legacy in the Berlin Republic between 1998 and 2002. During my time at the IGS I also worked as website editor for the German-British Forum, an organisation which promotes German-British cooperation in the fields of politics, business and culture.
I joined the Germanic Studies Department at Sheffield in 2003. I am coordinator of the BA Modern Languages and Interpreting and teach French and German liaison and conference interpreting modules as part of this degree programme. In addition, I teach a final year option course on the legacy of the Nazi past in modern German political culture as well as core language and culture modules.
My research focuses on public remembrance of the legacy of National Socialism in post-unification Germany. I am particularly interested in the development and pedagogical role of memorials and memorial sites. I am currently involved in a joint project (with Nick Hodgin) examining political, historical and cultural remembrance of the GDR. Our edited volume, Remembering the GDR, will be published by Camden House in 2011. Further research interests include the globalisation and Europeanisation of Holocaust remembrance, the debate on German wartime suffering, the challenges of Germany´s `double past´ and initiatives against the far right. I retain a keen interest in the European Union and German-British relations.
I have translated and edited texts for publication for organisations including the Institute for Economic Research in Halle and the House of the Wannsee Conference and the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin. I translated the English version of the permanent exhibition at the House of the Wannsee Conference in Berlin. I have also been involved in the translation, transcription and analysis of survivor testimonies for the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin and am a member of the AHRC Holocaust Writing and Translation Research Network.
Publications
Books
Contemporary Germany and the Nazi Legacy. Remembrance, Politics and the Dialectic of Normality, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007
Book Chapters
`The Role of German Perpetrator Sites in Teaching and Confronting the Nazi Past´, in: Bill Niven and Chloe Paver (eds), Memorialisation in Germany since 1945, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (forthcoming, 2009).
`Remembering for the future, engaging with the present: National memory management and the dialectic of normality in the "Berlin Republic"´, in: William Niven and James Jordan (eds.), Politics and Culture in 20th Century Germany, New York: Camden House, 2003.
`Leidkultur or Leitverantwortung? The legacy of the Third Reich in the national memory narratives of the "Berlin Republic"´, in: Herbert Hrachovec, Wolfgang Müller-Funk und Birgit Wagner (eds.), Kleine Erzählungen und ihre Medien, Vienna: Turia+Kant, 2003.
Journal Articles
`On pride and other pitfalls. Recent debates on German identity´, in: Stuart Parkes and Fritz Wefelmeyer (eds.), Seelenarbeit an Deutschland. Martin Walser in Perspective, German Monitor, No. 60, Amsterdam/New York, 2004.
`The Politics of Cultural Remembrance: The Holocaust monument in Berlin´, in: The International Journal of Cultural Policy (Special Issue: French and German Cultural Policies), vol. 9, No. 2, July 2003.
Book Reviews
Peter Carrier, Holocaust Monuments and National Memory: France and Germany since 1989, Berghahn, 2005, in: Forum for Modern Language Studies (forthcoming, 2008)
Dirk Moses, German Intellectuals and the Nazi Past, Cambridge University Press, 2007, in: Journal of Genocide Research (forthcoming, 2008/09).