Marion F. Deshmukh
Robert T. Hawkes Professor of History
European cultural history, history of modern Germany and Austria, German and Austrian art history
Marion Deshmukh teaches German and European history and German and Austrian art history. She received her B.A. summa cum laude from UCLA and her MA, M.Phil, and PhD from Columbia University. Her research and publications include works and exhibition catalogues on German art and politics. Her most recent publication is the exhibition catalogue of a curated show on Iconoclash! Political Imagery from the Berlin Wall to German Unification (2009).
She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the recipient of two German Academic Exchange Grants (DAAD), a Fulbright grant, a J. Paul Getty, American Historical Association, and an Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany grant. She serves on the board of editors of the German Studies Review and is on the academic advisory committee of the Max Liebermann Gesellschaft (Society), Berlin. She chairs the board of the Friends of the Goethe-Institut (Washington, DC) and serves as Vice President of the Friends of the German Historical Institute (Washington, DC).
Current Research
Dr. Deshmukh is currently completing a biography of Max Liebermann, the late 19th - early 20th century German Impressionist painter and cultural figure:
Max Liebermann: Modern Art and Modern Germany, manuscript in progress; expected completion, 2010.
Selected Publications
Co-editor (with Françoise Forster-Hahn & Barbara Gaehtgens), Max Liebermann: Art and International Modernism, forthcoming, (NY & Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2010)
Introduction and essay: Sonderwege Historical and Art Historical: the Case of Max Liebermann in book above.
Iconoclash! Political Imagery from the Berlin Wall to German Unification, [Exhibition catalog, Goethe-Institut] (Washington, DC, 2009).
“The Visual Arts and Cultural Migration in the 1930s and 1940s: A Literature Review,” Central European History, 41:4, December, 2008, 569-604.
Max Liebermann: Works on Paper [Exhibition Catalog, Goethe-Institut] (Washington, DC, 2006).
“Max Liebermann and the Politics of Painting,” in: Max Liebermann from Realism to Impressionism, [Exhibition Catalogue, Skirball Cultural Center] (Los Angeles, CA, 2005), 128-149.
“The Revision of Vision: Kunstvereine after 1945,” in Wolfgang-Uwe Friedrich (ed.), Germany and America, (New York & Oxford, 2001).
Courses Taught
Undergraduate Courses:
History 100: Western Civilization
History 300: Historical Methods
History 314: History of Germany in the 19th & 20th Centuries
History 388: Metropolitan Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Art History 303: National Traditions: Germany and Austria in the 19th and 20th Centuries
History 436: European Culture in the 19th and 20th Centuries
History 499: Senior Seminar: The Third Reich and the Holocaust
Graduate Courses:
History 636: Germany in the 20th Century
History 640: Metropolitan Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries
History 731: Research Seminar in European History, various topics
Recent Presentations
Featured speaker for the American Goethe Society to commemorate the 20th anniversary of German unification: “Cultural Transformations: Berlin in the 20th Century,” Goethe-Institut, Washington, DC, November 4, 2010
Keynote addresses for an exhibition: German Impressionist Landscape Painting: Liebermann-Corinth-Slevogt, “Berlin, 1900: Politics and the Triumvirate of Impressionism” Museum of Fine Arts. Houston, Texas, October 15 & 16, 2010.
“Berlin: Political Imagery since the Fall of the Wall,” Goethe Institut, Washington, DC, November, 2009.
“Berlin: Two Centuries of Transformation, Politics and Culture,” Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, for the Smithsonian Institution, November, 2008.
“Let’s Laugh: Humor and German Politics, 1890-1914,” Invited talk, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, December, 2007.
“Modernism and the Visual Arts,” (Invited), German Studies Association, San Diego, CA, October, 2007.
In the Media
Was interviewed for National Public Radio (PBS) in November 2009 for the Iconoclash exhibit. Was also interviewed on Fox News (TV channel 5) and the Discovery Channel for the same exhibition in November 2009.