Position

Tuning Participant

Institution

University of Missouri-Kansas City

Andrew Stuart Bergerson completed his PhD at the University of Chicago focusing on modern German history. After teaching as a visiting assistant professor at Franklin & Marshall College, he joined the history department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1999. An historian of everyday life, Drew’s interdisciplinary research focuses on the macrohistorical consequences of microhistorical ways of being, believing, and behaving. His first book, Ordinary Germans in Extraordinary Times (2004) investigated the role of ordinary Germans in the Nazi revolution, focusing on Hildesheim, a midsized provincial town in Lower Saxony. (A revised translation, Entscheidung im Alltag, will appear in 2012.) His co-authored second book, The Happy Burden of History (2011), explores the possibilities for historical responsibility in light of modern German lives and letters. New projects include co-editing a collection of integrative essays written by a team of 35 scholars on Contours of the Everyday in Germany; and serving as co-investigator for a “decelerated,” “crowd-sourced,” public history project, A Family Correspondence during the Second World War. Drew’s interest in Tuning arises from his experiences with assessment, his commitment to teaching, his love of intellectual collaboration, and his deep respect for constructive, spirited debate.