Esther Adaire

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Esther Adaire holds a Ph.D in Modern European History from the CUNY Graduate Center and an MA in History from Goldsmiths, University of London. Her doctoral research focused on extreme-right networks in Germany following 1989. Her dissertation, titled Neo-Nazi Postmodern, examined trends in extreme-right thought as well as the tactical and organizational evolution of neo-Nazi terror groups, demonstrating how an intellectual New Right gradually merged, from the 1990s onwards, with an underground extremist scene, producing the extreme-right as it exists in politics and in street-protest groups today. Related topics of research encompass post-1989 politics in Europe and the US, memory politics in Russia and Germany, and global terrorism, sedition and subversion, including online disinformation campaigns. She has published papers on the topics of neo-Nazism in the early years of German unification, and the dissolution of East German memory (see below).

At Cooper she teaches/has taught classes on the Making of Modern Society, Global Politics since 1989, and Modern Political Terrorism. Elsewhere she has taught classes on Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and its aftermath, as well as comparative fascisms. 

Prior to entering academia, she was a DJ in the post-punk music scenes of London and Berlin.

Publications:

“Historical Perspectives on January 6, 2021: A Conversation with Esther Adaire and Steve Remy” for EuropeNow no. 42 (July 2021) https://www.europenowjournal.org/2021/07/25/historical-perspectives-on-january-6-2021-a-conversation-with-esther-adaire-and-steve-remy

“Destroying German History: The Work of Heiner Müller as a Challenge to Public Memory,” in Comminications of the International Brecht Society, Issue 2020:1 (April 2020)

“This Other Germany, the Dark One." Post-Wall Memory Politics Surrounding the Neo-Nazi Riots in Rostock and Hoyerswerda’ in German Politics and Society, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Winter 2019), pp. 43-57

 

 

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