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Jennifer Rodgers

Ph.D. Candidate (ABD)
rodgj@sas.upenn.edu

Jennifer Rodgers

Education

American University , B.A. (1998)

Fields

Modern Germany, Modern Europe, Cultural Heritage

Research Interests

I am interested in how archives shape historical processes and my dissertation takes as its starting point the recently opened records of the International Tracing Service (ITS), which England and the United States established in 1944 to locate persons displaced during World War Two. Amid the escalating Cold War, however, the mandate underwent a significant transformation. I consequently examine how the American, West German and French governments used the organization and its so-called archive of horror to promote and legitimize their political and cultural agendas between in the Cold War era. Control over the ITS had immense practical and symbolic significance for each nation, and my research reveals its surprisingly influential role in the development of the Cold War; postwar relations among the West; European integration; and the politics of memory in West Germany and France.

Advising Committee

Publications

  • Co-author, “Paris sur l'axe Paris-Kiev” in Le Festin du Reich: Le pillage de la France occupée (1940-1945), Fabrizio Calvi and Marc Masurovsky (Paris, France: Fayard, 2007).
  • Assistant Editor, “ Americana in German Archives (German Historical Institute Reference Guide Number 12)”, Edited by Christoph Mauch and Thomas Reuther ( Washington , DC : German Historical Institute, 2001).
  • Articles on non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website and online encyclopedia
  • Reviews for HNet

Conference Papers

  • “Recasting the Refugee: The United States, West Germany and the International Tracing Service in the Early Cold War” (The Forty Years Crisis: Refugees in Europe, 1919-1959, September 2010, University of London, Birkbeck College)
  • "Preserving Memory or Securing the Future?: The United States, West Germany and the International Tracing Service” (Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association, October 2010, Oakland , CA : invited to present by the Archives Committee of the GSA)