Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Website URL: https://faculty.utah.edu/u6001948-Julie_Ault/research/index.hml

Keywords: East Germany (GDR), communism, environmental policy and protest, transnational history, transboundary pollution, European entanglements, borders

About Me: My areas of expertise are Modern German, European, and Environmental History. My research connects to multiple disciplines, including History, Environmental Humanities, German Studies, and European Studies. Additionally, my historical work speaks to trends that continue to this day. These include: the relationship between states, citizens, and the environment; the permeability of modern political borders; and questions of legitimacy under modern dictatorships and authoritarian regimes.

Recent Publications

Book

Saving Nature under Socialism: Transnational Environmentalism in East Germany, 1968-1990. New Studies in European History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Articles

“Defending God’s Creation? The Environment in State, Church and Society in the GDR, 1975-1989.” German History 37, No. 2 (June 2019): 205-226.

Chapters

“Aquatic Conundrums: East German Environmental Protection and Water Shortages, 1963-1989.” In Ecologies of Socialisms: Germany, Nature, and the Left in History, Politics, and Culture, edited by Sabine Moedersheim, Scott Moranda, and Eli Rubin, 201-226. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2019.
“Protesting Pollution: Environmental Activism in East Germany and Poland, 1980-1990.” In Nature’s Iron Curtain: Cold War Environmentalism in Capitalist and Communist Countries, edited by Astrid Mignon Kirchhof and John R. McNeill, 151-168. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019.