Elana Passman

Ph.D. Student (ABD)
passman@email.unc.edu

Major Field: Modern European History

Other Fields: Twentieth Century France and Germany; Cultural History

Advisor: Donald Reid

Research Interests: Dissertation Title: "Envisioning a New Europe: Franco-German Cultural Cooperation, 1925-1954"

My research focuses on efforts to achieve reconciliation between France and Germany after the First World War. It has been a long-standing cliché to deem the Franco-German relationship as one of hereditary enmity, and the many successive attempts to counter this antagonism remain largely unexplored by scholars. After the war -- particularly in the wake of the 1925 Treaty of Locarno -- networks of scholars, artists, critics, and students advocated a unified Europe under the auspices of Franco-German cultural cooperation. Through cultural exchanges, publications, and conferences, French and German individuals promoted distinct forms of cooperation. My dissertation traces the activities and rhetoric of several Franco-German friendship societies, and in so doing, highlights the remarkable continuities among such associations' ventures from the interwar period, through the Second World War, into the postwar French occupation of Germany, and on into the mid-1950s. In particular, my research examines war-time collaboration as only one of many forms of Franco-German cooperation in the 20th century. I argue that interwar efforts at cooperation can be understood as laying the foundations for both Vichy-era collaboration and European integration.