About Dr. Mushaben

Joyce Marie Mushaben received her Ph.D. from Indiana University.  A former Director of the Institute for Women’s & Gender Studies, she currently  serves as the Curators’ Distinguished  Professor of Comparative Politics.  Dr. Mushaben spent more than 18 years living & researching in Germany. Her early work focused on new social movements (peace, ecology, feminism, anti-nuclear protests and neo-Nazi activism), German national identity, and  generational change.  She then moved on to European Union developments, citizenship and migration policies, women’s leadership, Euro-Islam debates and comparative welfare state reforms.

To date, her books and monographs include:

1) From Post-War to Post-Wall Generations: Changing Attitudes towards the National Question and NATO in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1949-1995;

2) Identity without a Hinterland?  Continuity and Change in National Consciousness in the German Democratic Republic, 1949-1989;

3) The Changing Faces of Citizenship: Integration and Mobilization among Ethnic Minorities in Germany;

4)  Gendering the European Union: New Responses to Old Democratic Deficits co-edited with

Gabriele Abels; and

5)  Becoming  Madam Chancellor:  Angela Merkel and the Berlin Republic  (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2017)

Dr. Mushaben’s articles have appeared in World Politics, Polity, West European Politics, German Politics, German Politics & Society, the Journal of Peace Research, Democratization, Citizenship Studies, Femina Politica, and the Journal of Ethnicity & Migration Studies, and others.

She is a former president of the German Politics Association, has served on the Governing Board of the International Association for the Study of German Politics, and the German Studies Association, is an Editorial Board member for German Politics & Society, German Politics, Femina Politica, and the Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies.

Professor Mushaben has secured numerous international grants, some of which are fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the German Marshall Fund, the Fulbright  Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.  She has served as a visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences, at the GDR Academy for Social Sciences, and the Central Institute for Youth Research (both in East Germany).  She was appointed the first Research Fellow in the BMW Center for German & European Studies at Georgetown University, worked as a Visiting Professor at the Ohio State University and Washington University, as a Senior Fulbright Lecturer in Erfurt, and a Visiting Professor at universities in Stuttgart, Frankfurt/Main, Tübingen, and Berlin. She has  guest lectured at more than 35 institutions of higher learning, including Harvard, Cornell, Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Washington, Berlin’s Free University, the Humboldt University, the College of Europe, Science  Po, and the London School of Economics.

Her honors include:  the UM-St. Louis Trailblazer Award (1999) for advancing women’s rights,  the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research Creativity (2007), and the Missouri Governor’s Award for Teaching Excellence (2012).  That year she also became only the fifth woman (among 40 men) to be designated a Curators’  Distinguished Research Professor.  In 2016 she was named the College of Arts & Sciences first interdisciplinary Professor of Global Studies.

About The Topic

Germany’s 2017 elections marked the first time since 1949 that a far-right party with neo-Nazi adherents crossed the 5% threshold needed to enter the national parliament. Violating a long-standing historical taboo, the Alternative for Germany’s “victory” reflects national-populist tendencies that have taken hold in other EU member states, demonstrated by the rise of nationalist parties in France, the UK, Poland, Italy, and even Denmark  since the 1990s.  Professor Mushaben will explore the causes of resurgent ethno-nationalism across EU states, including the after effects of the 2008/2009 global financial crisis and reactions to the  2015 refugee crisis. She argues that the real forces fueling this dangerous resurgence are both systemic and psychological in nature, reflecting  neo-liberal austerity policies and the heinous effects of unregulated social media.  She will draw brief comparisons to comparable forces driving “white nationalist” groups in the United States, underscoring several curious gender twists.  Zooming in on Germany as a special case, the talk will conclude with the ways in which right-wing extremist currents there have been shaped by eastern resentments dating back to unification policies of the 1990s.

Event Details

Come hear what Dr. Mushaben has to say about “The Rise of Extremism” 8 January, 2019 at 10:45 AM. Q & A period afterward. Get directions here.