Chase Richards
Ph.D. Candidate (ABD)
ivr [at] sas [dot] upenn [dot] edu
Education
B.A. History and Classical Languages, University of Kansas (2005)
A.M. History, University of Pennsylvania (2008)
concentration
modern Europe, with an emphasis on Germany
Current Research Interests
- cultural practices and politics
- material textuality
- consumer capitalism
- popularization of knowledge
- sociability and ideology
Dissertation Synopsis
My dissertation treats the activist logic, market-conditioned development and textually mediated impact of popular publishing initiatives in the German states after the Revolution of 1848. It focuses on the Familienblatt, or "family paper," a usually illustrated and highly successful genre of middlebrow general-interest magazine with ties both to the British penny format and forerunners in Germany. By bringing a subtle mixture of education and entertainment into the home, the liberal pioneers of the family paper hoped to politicize civil society at its putative core and so resume the work of the failed revolution, even in the grip of a harsh reaction. Did they? This project draws on archival and published sources to showcase the complex relationship between modern political culture and modern print culture in the latter's shift to a mass-media regime.
Dissertation Committee
Publications
"Herder's 'Phantom' Public," Modern Intellectual History 9 (2012): forthcoming.
"Ernst Keil vs. Prussia: Censorship and Compromise in the Amazon Affair," Central European History 46 (2013): forthcoming.
Fellowships and Editorial Work
I have won research fellowships and travel grants from the Berlin House of Representatives, DAAD, the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, the German Historical Institute, the Fulbright Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania. In October 2010 I became the first assistant editor at the interdisciplinary journal Humanity. In July 2011 my journalistic pursuits widened to include the position of assistant editor at the Journal of the History of Ideas. Both are published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
A current c.v. is available upon request.
