Dr. Torsten Kathke

Research Interests

• History of Technology
• Media History
• Intellectual History
• Memory Cultures
• U.S. Western History

Biography

Torsten Kathke is a historian with a doctorate in American cultural history from LMU. His main focus is on the cultural history of the United States and Germany during the 19th and 20th centuries. After sojourns at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. from 2013 to 2014 and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne from 2014 to 2016, he taught at the University of Cologne’s history department (2016–2017) and was first a wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (lecturer/assistant professor) in American Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University’s Obama Institute from 2017 to 2024 and then an interim professor at the same department from 2024 to 2026. In 2023 he was also a guest fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg as part of the Digital Transformation Lab (DigiTraL): Digital Diplomacy and Statecraft funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.

His dissertation dealt with the Gadsden Purchase region, the southern parts of today’s Arizona and New Mexico, during the roughly half-century from its purchase by the United States until the onset of World War I. The resulting book, Wires That Bind: Nation, Region, and Technology in the Southwestern United States, 1854–1920 was published in 2017.

His current research project focuses on popular books about the state of society (“Zeitdiagnosen” or “Gegenwartsdiagnosen”) in the United States and Germany during the 1970s and 1980s; a time during which non-fiction books were an important but so far often neglected part of popular culture as well as academic, political, and – more broadly – public discourse.

Select Publications

• Kathke, Torsten. Wires That Bind: Nation, Region, and Technology in the Southwestern United States, 1854–1920. Transcript Verlag, 2017.
• Kathke, Torsten. „Go West, Young Band“. In Ashton, Bodie A., Ed. The Pet Shop Boys and the Political: Queerness, Culture, Identity and Society. Bloomsbury Academic, 2024.
• Kathke, Torsten. „Utopian Roots and Hybrid Futures: The Ideology and Governance of Social Media Platforms“. Digital Diplomacy and Statecraft Policy Brief. German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Hamburg, 2023.
• Kathke, Torsten. „Protocols and Platforms: Historicizing the Ideologies of Social Media“. Digital Diplomacy and Statecraft Working Paper. German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Hamburg, 2023. https://www.giga-hamburg.de/en/publications/contributions/protocols-and-platforms-historicizing-the-ideologies-of-social-media.
• Tomann, Juliane, Torsten Kathke, and Mirko Uhlig. „Reenactment in der DDR und der BRD. Eine akteurszentrierte Sondierung“. Zeitschrift für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft 2023, Nr. 1 (2023): 68–91. https://doi.org/10.31244/zekw/2023/01.05.
• Tomann, Juliane, Torsten Kathke, and Mirko Uhlig. „Reenactment in the GDR and the FRG. An Actor-Centered Study“. Zeitschrift Für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft 2023, Nr. 1 (2023): i–xxiii. https://doi.org/10.31244/zekw/2023/01.20.
• Kathke, Torsten, Juliane Tomann, and Mirko Uhlig. „Curation as a Social Practice: Counter-Narratives in Public Space“. International Public History, 12.December 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/iph-2022-2046.
• Kathke, Torsten. „Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country“. In The Routledge Handbook of Star Trek. Routledge, 2022.
• Uhlig, Mirko, and Torsten Kathke. „Baumholder 1985 – das ‚erste deutsche Reenactment‘“. In Sabine Stach and Juliane Tomann, Eds. Historisches Reenactment, De Gruyter, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734430-007.
• Kathke, Torsten. „Im Banne des ‚Zukunftsschocks ‘: Zukunftsvorstellungen in populären Sachbüchern der 1970er-Jahre“. In Dobroć, Paulina, and Andie Rothenhäusler, Eds. 2000 Revisited – Visionen der Welt von morgen im Gestern und Heute, Vol. 11. Karlsruher Studien Technik und Kultur. KIT Scientific Publishing, 2020. https://www.ksp.kit.edu/site/books/e/10.5445/KSP/1000117728/.
• Kathke, Torsten. „A Star Trek About Being Star Trek: History, Liberalism, and Discovery’s Cold War Roots“. In Sabrina Mittermeier and Mareike Spychala, Eds. Fighting for the Future: Essays on Star Trek: Discovery. Liverpool University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781789621761.003.0004.
• Kathke, Torsten. „‚Daß es ein Wahnsinn ist, wie wir zur Zeit die Welt bewirtschaften‘: Herbert Gruhl und Ein Planet wird geplündert“. Historisch-Politische Mitteilungen 23, Nr. 1 (2016): 139–58. https://doi.org/10.7788/hpm-2016-0108.
• Kathke, Torsten. „Zukunft vergangener Gegenwarten: Wie Zeitdiagnosen die großen Debatten der 1970er- und 1980er-Jahre bestimmten“. Gesellschaftsforschung, Februar 2015.
• Kathke, Torsten. „Power Lines: Arizona Elites, the Telegraph, and the Construction of a Regional Identity, 1870–1910“. In Simone Müller-Pohl and Michaela Hampf, Eds. Global Communication Electric: Business, News and Politics in the World of Telegraphy. Campus Verlag, 2013.
• Kathke, Torsten. Multiple entries in USA-Lexikon: Schlüsselbegriffe zu Politik, Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft, Kultur, Geschichte und zu den deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen. Christof Mauch and Rüdiger B. Wersich, Eds. Erich Schmidt Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, 2013. https://doi.org/10.37307/b.978-3-503-13747-3.
• Kathke, Torsten, and Sascha Pöhlmann. „Editorial“. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies 11 (2010). https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.134.
• Kathke, Torsten. „Die Nationalisierung US-amerikanischer Demokratie im 19. Jahrhundert–Modell für eine transnationale europäische Demokratie im 21. Jahrhundert?“ In Thomas Bedorf, Ed. Die Zukunft der Demokratie. LIT Verlag Münster, 2009.

Bildquelle: Kathke, Torsten 2026