Professor Drew Bergerson is an historian of modern Germany with interest in the history of everyday life (Alltagsgeschichte), ethnographic/oral history, interdisciplinary German studies, and the digital and public humanities. He teaches a range of courses on modern German, modern European, and modern global history. He is an affiliate faculty member with UMKC's Center for Digital and Public Humanities.
Dr. Bergerson was born in New York. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1998 and has taught in France, Germany, and Taiwan. He was awarded the UMKC Trustees' Faculty Scholar Award for Research in 2005 and the Presidential Faculty Award for Cross-Cultural Engagement in 2021.
Bergerson has authored, co-authored, or edited several books: Ordinary Germans in Extraordinary Times (2004; auf Deutsch: Nationalsozialismus in alltäglichen Interaktionen [2019]), The Happy Burden of History (2011) and Ruptures in the Everyday (2017). From 2017 to 2021, he worked with colleagues and students from UMKC, UMSL, Uni-Hamburg, Uni-Wien, and Uni-Wrocław on virtual, interuniversity graduate research seminars researching and writing the history of German Migration to Missouri, resulting in two more edited collections: German Migration to Missouri (2019), and From Langenbrück to Kansas City (2021). Since 2011, he has served as co-PI for “citizen science” projects focusing on the letters of ordinary German couples before, during, and after the Second World War. Details can be found at Alltag im Krieg.
Undergraduate:
Graduate:
B.A., history, Cornell University (1988)
M.A./Ph.D., history, University of Chicago (1998)
Department of History, National Taipei University, Sanxia, Taiwan (2015)
Institute für Europäische Ethnologie, Universität Wien, Austria (2015)
Institute des Sciences sociales du Politique, L’Université Paris X–Ouest Nanterre La Défense, France (2015)
Institute für Geschichte, Stiftung Universität Hildesheim, Germany (2006, 2009)
Department of History, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA (1998-99)
Instructional Videos (UMKC only): Decoding the Old German Scripts: Lower Case, Upper Case
Principles for Scholarly Discourse: Statement of Principles