Uta Poiger

Professor of History

Together with Kabria Baumgartner and Dan Cohen, Uta G. Poiger leads the Mellon-funded initiative Reckonings: A Local History Platform for the Community Archivist.

In her research, Poiger examines 20th-century German culture and society from a transnational perspective, and makes the study of race and gender central to these explorations. In individually authored as well as collaborative books and articles, she has addressed questions of Americanization, globalization, imperialism, and the promises and challenges of comparative history. Her graduate and undergraduate teaching has included courses on modern European and German history, the Holocaust and comparative genocide, gender and sexuality, and historiography.

In her role as Special Advisor to the Provost on Humanics in 2023/24, Poiger worked with colleagues, students and partners across Northeastern’s global campus system to foster signature educational initiatives in the context of Northeastern’s experiential learning model and the university’s New Academic Plan, Experience Unleashed. Together with James Hackney, she led Northeastern University’s Presidential Council on Diversity and Inclusion from 2013 to 2024.

From November 2012 to June 2023, Poiger served as Dean of the College of Social Science and Humanities at Northeastern University. With the college’s faculty, staff and students, she worked to enhance the college’s and the university’s leadership in the Experiential Liberal Arts. As the organizational philosophy and integrative educational model of the college, the Experiential Liberal Arts is intertwined with Northeastern’s mission in Humanics. Under her leadership, the college developed three areas of strategic focus: the intersections of resilience and sustainability; cultural transformations, governance and globalization; and network science, digital humanities and information ethics. Together with Richard Daynard, she led the committee that formulated Northeastern’s new general education curriculum NUpath, implemented in 2016.

Poiger holds a PhD in History from Brown University and an MA in History from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She began her studies at Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg, Germany. Before coming to Northeastern as chair of the History Department in 2011, Poiger taught for sixteen years at the University of Washington, Seattle, where she was the Giovanni and Amne Costigan Endowed Professor of History and Adjunct Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Awards & Honors

Giovanni and Amne Costigan Endowed Professorship in History, University of Washington, 2010-11
Visiting Scholar, Minda da Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University, 2010-11
Visiting Associate Professor of History and History and Literature, Harvard University, 2006-8
Collaborative Grants for “The Modern Girl Around the World:”Taylor Institute, University of Washington, 2000
Institute for Transnational Studies, UW, 2001-2002
Simpson Humanities Center, UW, 2001-2002; 2002-2003; 2003-2004; 2004-5
Graduate Fund for Excellence, UW 2002-2003; 2004-2005
Fellow, Society of Scholars, Simpson Humanities Center, University of Washington, 2002-2003
Pressly Award, History Department, University of Washington, for “The Holocaust,” (with Sarah Stein), 2003
Course Development Grant for “The Holocaust,” (with Sarah Stein), Center for West European Studies, University of Washington, Summer 2001
Royalty Research Fund Award, University of Washington, 2000
Junior Faculty Development Award, University of Washington, 1998

Selected Publications

Books-in-Progress

Beauty and Business in Germany: An International History
Germany: Cold War and Beyond (under contract with Blackwell-Wiley)

Books

Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany. Series: Lynn Hunt and Victoria Bonnell, eds.”Studies on the History of Society and Culture 35.” Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

Edited Volumes

Editor with Modern Girl Around the World Research Group (Alys Eve Weinbaum, Lynn M. Thomas, Priti Ramamurthy, Uta G. Poiger, Madeleine Yue Dong, Tani E. Barlow), The Modern Girl Around the World: Modernity, Consumption, Globalization. Series: Inderpal Grewal, Karen Kaplan, and Robyn Wiegman, eds. “Next Wave: New Directions in Women’s Studies.” Durham: Duke University Press, 2008
Editor, with Heide Fehrenbach. Transactions, Transgressions, Transformations: American Culture in Western Europe and Japan. New York: Berghahn Books, 2000.
Editor, with Volker Berghahn, Documents in German History. Volume 8, 1945-1961. For German Historical Institute Washington; web-based in German and English, includes over 200 documents, numerous images, and introduction. The entire project is the winner of the American Historical Association’s 2010 James Harvey Robinson Award for the best educational resource in any media in any field of History.