Jeff Bowersox

Assistant Professor

Jeff Bowersox came to the University of Southern Mississippi in 2008 after completing his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto.  His research interests revolve around German and European contacts with the wider world, particularly from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.  His book, entitled Raising Germans in the Age of Empire: Youth and Colonial Culture, 1871-1914 (Oxford UP, forthcoming 2013), is a cultural history of the German colonial imagination with a particular emphasis on young people.  He has also published a number of articles and chapters on colonial exhibitions, youth literature, the German Boy Scouts (Pfadfinder), and German-Polish relations, and has articles in progress on colonial revisionism in Weimar Germany and on the resonance of the Boxer uprising in German youth culture.   

His current research project explores the presence and experiences of black entertainers in Germany between 1871 and 1945, and he is also working on a broader teaching resource on the history of black people in modern Germany.  In 2011/12, he received from USM a Summer Grant for the Improvement of Instruction to develop this teaching resource, a Provost's Scholarly Research Grant, and the Faculty Senate/University President Junior Faculty Research Award.

Dr. Bowersox teaches a range of undergraduate and graduate courses in world, modern European, and German history, including focused explorations of nationalism, modern colonialism, Nazi Germany, and black Germany.

Dr. Bowersox will be serving as a Research Fellow at King's College London for the 2012/13 academic year.

Curricullum Vitae  |  Website