Jonathan Bach
Jonathan Bach is Professor of Global Studies at The New School and Affiliated Faculty at the European Studies Council. His research focuses on German politics and culture, the politics of memory, and post-socialist urbanism, including Chinese urbanization and transition to a market society. His three book projects on Germany explore the politics of memory as German society wrestles with contested pasts: National Socialism, East Germany, and colonial legacies. His current book project, After Theft: Loss, Loot, and Reckoning in Germany, examines how Germany is confronting its imperial past alongside the memory of fascist and socialist regimes.
His most recent monograph What Remains: Everyday Encounters with the Socialist Past in Germany (Columbia University Press, 2017, published in Germany by Reclam Verlag in an award-winning edition), examines the legacy of the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) after reunification in 1990. It asks what happens to the state when the state suddenly disappears, and its vast material remains – from everyday objects such as consumer items to the remnants of the Berlin Wall itself – become culturally obsolete yet politically charged inheritances in a market economy. It shows how the socialist everyday became a contentious site caught between redemption and damnation.
His first monograph, Between Sovereignty and Integration: German Foreign Policy and National Identity after 1989 (St. Martin’s Press, 1999) explored how the German government struggled over what it meant for Germany to be “normal,” “moral,” and “responsible” in its 1995 decision to send troops to former Yugoslavia during the genocide against Bosnian Muslims, fundamentally changing how Germany understood the role of its military abroad.
Bach’s research into post-socialist transitions resulted in two edited volumes: Re-Centering the City: Global Mutations of Socialist Modernity (UCL Press, 2020) and Learning from Shenzhen: China’s Post-Mao Experiment from Special Zone to Model City (University of Chicago Press, 2017). His articles and book chapters have appeared in, among others, Cultural Anthropology, British Journal of Sociology, Public Culture, Theory, Culture and Society, German Politics and Society, and Cultural Politics.
At The New School, Bach has served as Interim Dean of the School of Undergraduate Studies, founding chair of the interdisciplinary Global Studies program, and Associate Director of the Graduate Program in International Affairs. He serves on the editorial boards of German Politics & Society, Sociologica: International Journal for Sociological Debate, and the book series Spektrum: Publications of the German Studies Association, and Global Easts.