The Ohio State University

Alexander Stephan

Alexander Stephan was an Ohio Eminent Scholar, Professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Senior Fellow at the Mershon Center. He was author or editor of 26 books and more than 100 articles and chapters in Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. 

Stephan's work spanned four major areas, including:

History (security studies, Cold War, FBI and culture, Third Reich).  One example of Stephan's work in this area is Communazis (Yale University Press, 2000), which recounts how intellectuals who fled Nazi Germany to settle in the United States became the subjects of surveillance by the FBI, INS, and House Un-American Activities Committee. 

Public diplomacy (European-American relations, American culture and anti-Americanism in Europe and the developing world).  Stephan's work in this area includes edited volumes in both English and German such as The Americanization of Europe: Culture, Diplomacy, and Anti-Americanism after 1945 (Berghahn Books, 2006), which explores the role of American culture and anti-Americanism in 11 European countries.

Migration and exile studies. This area of Stephan's work includes studies of expatriate German writers such as Anna Seghers and Lion Feuchtwanger.  For example, Exile and Otherness: New Approaches to the Experience of the Nazi Refugees (Lang, 2005), explores the possibilities and limitations of concepts like diaspora, delocalization, and transit-culture for German and Austrian refugees who fled Nazi persecution.

Culture and area studies (cultural politics, German cultural relations with Eastern Europe, Marxist aesthetics). In this category, among others, Stephan examines the work of authors like the East German novelists Christa Wolf and Anna Seghers, and the Swiss writer Max Frisch,

Stephan has also organized multiple conferences, symposia and speaker series at the Mershon Center, many of which resulted in books.  These include:

• Exile and Otherness: New Approaches to the Experience of the Nazi Refugees (2005)
• American Culture in Europe (2003)
• Das Amerika der Autoren (2003)
• Jeans, Rock und Vietnam: Amerikanische Kultur in der DDR (2002)
• Americanization and Anti-Americanism: The Impact of American Culture on Germany after 1945 (2002)

Last year, more than 30 of Stephan's colleagues in the United States and Europe came together to contribute essays for a Festschrift in his honor called Kulturpolitik und Politik der Kultur/Cultural Politics and the Politics of Culture (Peter Lang, 2007).  The book reflects Stephan's scholarly interests in the interaction of politics and culture in German-American relations as well as broader traditions of cultural mediation. Topics range from current concerns about public policy and cultural diplomacy, Americanization and anti-Americanism to studies on European intellectuals who had significant impact on the politics of culture after World War II.

Contributors include John Mueller, Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies; former Mershon Center director Richard Ned Lebow; and Mershon faculty associate Dorothy Noyes.  The volume was edited by Helen Fehervary and Bernd Fischer, both professors of Germanic Languages and Literatures at The Ohio State University.

Alexander Stephan
Ohio Eminent Scholar
Germanic Languages and Literatures
The Ohio State University