CITAS Brownbag Session | Christiane Reves (Arizona State University / REAF Visiting Professor) - Innovation, Interconnection, Interdisciplinarity: Examples from ASU’s School of International Letters and Cultures

For the 6th year in a row Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, Arizona was ranked No. 1 in Innovation by the US News and World Report ranking before prestigious academic institutions such as MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Stanford and Princeton. And according to the University President Michael Crow: “Innovation is infused in ASU’s DNA because we are designed to spark, support and manifest new ideas.” On the surface this might reflect ASU´s cutting edge Mars exploration contributions, innovations in medicine and engineering and the number of Nobel Prize winners as faculty. But ASU is a comprehensive university, and the humanities play a large role in the picture as well. How do the humanities and particularly language and culture studies contribute to innovation at ASU whose president also coined the term and concept of "New American University"? Dr. Christiane Reves, Lecturer at Arizona State´s School of International Letters and Cultures will present examples from research and teaching: from "ecologizing" the curriculum, virtual internships, community partnerships to interdisciplinary and transnational research. She will talk about ideas on local and regional history (Landes/Regionalgeschichte) in the transnational context and introduce the interdisciplinary research project on faith-based responses to migrants and refugees in comparative urban spaces, a comparison between Phoenix, AZ and Berlin, Germany. After a short presentation, there will be time for questions, discussions, and vision casting.

Christiane Reves is a lecturer at Arizona State University’s School of International Letter and Cultures, where she also organizes ASU's study abroad program to Regensburg. She received her doctorate in modern and contemporary European history from the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Würzburg, Germany in 2005. She also holds a combined master's and bachelor's in history and pedagogy from the Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. Her teaching and research brought her to Germany, France, Italy, Israel, and the United States. She taught German and history classes at Drew University, Madison, NY and Nyack College, Nyack, NY.  Among her interdisciplinary research interests are: immigration and transnational migration, networks and cultural transfer, Jewish migration and networks, Middle Eastern History, Regional History, Resistance in the Third Reich, or Modern and Contemporary Italian History with a focus on Italian merchants in the 17th and 18th century. Current research interests include the intersections of religion and gender or the entanglements resulting from the post-war U.S. military presence in Germany. Currently, Christiane Reves is a REAF Visiting Professor at the University of Regensburg.