Biography
Willeke Sandler is a historian of modern Germany. She graduated with a B.A. in History
from New York University and a M.A. in History with a Certificate in Historical Agencies
and Administration from Northeastern University, before receiving her Ph.D. in History
from Duke University. Her research interests include public culture and expressions
of race and nationalism in Nazi Germany and in twentieth-century Germany more broadly,
imperialism in European culture, and the relationship between visual culture, public
history, and nationalism. Her research has been published in Central European History and the Journal of Women’s History.
Her first book, Empire in the Heimat: Colonialism and Public Culture in the Third Reich (Oxford University Press, 2018), examines the public activities of colonial lobbying
organizations in Nazi Germany and their efforts to both keep alive the memory of Germany’s
overseas empire (lost in 1919 through the Treaty of Versailles) and to agitate for
the reclamation of these territories. Empire in the Heimat tells the paradoxical story of colonialists’ construction of a German national character
driven by overseas imperialism despite the absence of a colonial reality.
Her current project investigates German settlement in their former colony of German
East Africa (after 1919 the British Mandate of Tanganyika) in the interwar period.
Dr. Sandler is the internship coordinator for the History Department. If you are interested
in completing an internship for credit, see the criteria on the department website
or send Dr. Sandler an email.
Courses
- HS 100 Encountering the Past
- HS 101 The Making of the Modern World: Europe
- HS 318 Creation of Modern Germany, 1770-1992
- HS 319 Nazi Germany and the Holocaust
- HS 417D Germans in Africa, Africans in Germany
- HS 431 Introduction to Public History
- HS 474 Holocaust Memory in Germany and America
Areas of Specialization
- Modern Germany
- Modern Europe
- Imperialism
- Nationalism
- Public history