Austin Hoffman,

Austin is a Ph.D. student in the history department at Duke. His regions of study include Germany and Central Europe specifically and the World more generally. He researches the German Empire and themes related to the military, nationalism, the environment, technology, and gender, with a focus on masculinity during the long nineteenth century and World War I. Austin's dissertation project asks questions about the relationship between soldiers, alcohol, and manhood in the Bavarian army from 1900 to 1918. This work explores the extent to which beer and its material and social culture played a critical role in the formation and work needed to create and maintain Bavarian soldiers’ masculine identities, a framework that tied men to their sense of domestic self during conflict. In other words, Austin aims to uncover whether alcohol and the supply (or lack) of beer – a commodity whose production dropped drastically from 1914 to 1918 – played a critical role in the eventual disillusionment and collapse of the German army and their loss in World War I.  

M.A. California State University, Long Beach, 2024

B.A. University of California, Riverside, 2020

U.S. Department of State Title VIII Fellowship Recipient, 2023

Languages: German, Lithuanian (beginner)

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