Jenna Pittman,

I am a first-year Ph.D. student studying transnational modern European history with geographic interests in Eastern Europe and Germany in the 20th century. I am thematically interested in the political economy, socialist economics, and gender. I am interested in how my thematic interests broadly relate to Europe's geopolitical position in the world, the study of former-Soviet nations, and how Eastern European nations have been influenced by the Soviet Union and its legacy before and after 1991.

My interest in modern European history has been inspired by my work on my undergraduate honor’s thesis, "Echoes of Freedom: Bruce Springsteen’s 1988 Concert in East Berlin and its Impact on the Social and Political Climate of the GDR." My thesis addressed larger questions related to music and culture in the GDR, as well as the historiography of East Germany related to top-down and bottom-up understandings of everyday life and state power. My experience with conducting funded archival research at the Bundesarchiv in Berlin, Germany while simultaneously participating in an intensive German language course at Leuphana Universität, was extremely positive and formative to my worldviews. 

ABOUT ME

I have a genuine passion for learning and often find myself using my free time to continue reading. However, I also love standup comedy, sitcoms, The Beatles, impressionist art, and Stanley Kubrick films.

EDUCATION

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