Prof. Dr. Axel Schäfer

Research Interests

In my research I focus on nineteenth and twentieth-century U.S. political, intellectual, and cultural history, with a particular emphasis on religion and politics, transnational social thought and policy, and migration and consumer capitalism.

SFB-Related Research

As part of the Collaborative Research Cluster (SFB) I examine the relationship between immigration, consumer capitalism, and welfare state-building in the twentieth-century U.S. In particular, I explore the tools and methods of categorizing immigrants as part of the historical construction of new consumer subjectivities. The goal of the project is to show the close connection between immigration debates and human categorization in consumer and welfare policy. Seen from this perspective, the anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. today has less to do with the number or origin of immigrants than with a crisis of consumer society in an age of limited resources.

Other Projects

In addition, I am working on various projects that unpack the historical relationship between “prosperity politics” and democracy in the U.S. since the late nineteenth century. I am interested in how democractic societies, whose functioning and legitimacy is tied to economic growth policies, material abundance, and global resource depletion, can manage the transition to a post-consumerist society while remaining committed to democratic governance. Moreover, my research focuses on the role of religion in negotiating the cultural contradictions in political economies ranging from the Cold War liberalism to neoliberal regimes.

Professional Career

In 2015 I joined the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies of the Johannes Gutenberg University as Professor of U.S. History. Prior to coming to Mainz I was director of the David Bruce Center for American Studies at Keele University in the UK, American Studies Fellow at Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, and Instructor at the John F. Kennedy Institute in Berlin. I also taught at various universities in the U.S. and Eastern Europe. I completed my Habilitation at Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. I received my Ph.D. in History from the University of Washington (Seattle), and hold an M.A. degree from the University of Oregon.

Foto: Stephanie Füssenich