Research seminar: 'Germany, Colonialism, and Live Documentary: New Ways of Looking at Modern History and New Methods of Delivery'

This talk begins with a new approach to the history of colonialism, specifically something called ‘inner colonization’, and then moves into how this history has been presented, as a ‘Live Documentary’. First, Dr Nelson will lay out the contours of his recent book, Frontiers of Empire: Max Sering, Inner Colonization, and the German East, 1871-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2024), which traces how ideas for Germany’s colonial frontier evolved from an understanding of the western frontier of North America. Central to this evolution was the concept of ‘inner colonization’, settling farmers at the edges of the nation, in the borderlands, and attempting to understand where such a process fits within the larger history of colonization. Then, he will describe how this project was presented as a Live Documentary, where the historian is on stage, images and clips from a documentary of the project are displayed at key points in the lecture, original composed music is played/mixed by the composer on stage, and the production ends with an audience Q&A in which archival clips from the documentary, not used in the lecture, are sometimes employed to answer audience questions.

Rob Nelson is Head of the Department of History at the University of Windsor in Canada. In 2024, Cambridge University Press published his book Frontiers of Empire: Max Sering, Inner Colonization, and the German East, 1871-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2024). His revised Cambridge dissertation appeared in 2011 as German Soldier Newspapers of the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Earlier, he published the edited volume Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East: 1850 Through the Present (Springer. 2009). He has won fellowships from the Killam Trust, the Humboldt Foundation, and was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at the City University of New York, Graduate Center.