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Nancy Reagin

Pace University, Women's and Gender Studies, Faculty Member

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Nancy Reagin (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University) is a professor of European history and gender studies at Pace University, where she has served in a variety of administrative and faculty leadership positions. She's published four scholarly books and many articles in German gender history, with a focus on German feminism, national identities, consumers, and fan cultures. Her current project focuses on the emergence of fan communities in twentieth century Europe and the United State. She has also edited a 5 volume series of historical readers companions for fantasy and science fiction literature. She chairs or is active on far too many committees.

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Drafts by Nancy Reagin

Nancy Reagin CV 2024

 Coordinated substantial revision of class schedule offerings, resulting in improvements in clas... more

Journal Articles & Book Chapters by Nancy Reagin

Whose Homestead Is It? Little Houses on the Prairie and the Cultural Politics of White Colonial Settlement in the United States

Media, Place and Tourism: Imagined Worlds, 2024

This chapter examines the fandom that grew up around Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the ... more This chapter examines the fandom that grew up around Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie" series, and the memorial sites ("homesites") and heritage tourism associated with the fandom. From the time of the fandom's origins in the 1950s, fans perceived the stories and homesites as important lieux de mémoire (sites of memory) both for the imagined world of Wilder, and for the history of American white colonial settlers. Originally, the storyworld and homesites were seen as important relics of the settlement of the West and the creation of American national identity. But the resurgence of Indigenous political activism and a new understanding of the history of the American West challenged this traditional white view of American history and identity. Changing public history narratives about white settlers and Indigenous cultures fragmented white Americans’ understanding of their history. As a result, some Little House fan organizations and fan scholars –like the public history sector that they overlap with – are working through the process of including Indigenous Americans in their depictions of the historical
world where the stories are set. At the same time, conservative fans amplified their support for older, Turnerian understandings of Western history. The books and homesites have been repurposed in ways that reflect current U.S. political polarization. This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

"Socialist Indians and Capitalist Cowboys: The Uses of Westerns in both Germanies"

The Cold War and Entertainment Television (ed. Lori Maguire)

“Dances With Worlds: Karl May, ‘Indian’ Hobbyists, and German Fans of the American West since 1912,” Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 13 (May, 2016): 553-583.

This essay discusses the German fans of author Karl May's Westerns against the backdrop of a broa... more This essay discusses the German fans of author Karl May's Westerns against the backdrop of a broader community of German hobbyists devoted to the American West, as this community developed after 1912 – examining the impact of political repression, war, and the division of Germany after 1945 on these fan communities and their interpretations of the American West. German fans of the 'Old West' (both 'Indian' re-enactment hobbyists and fans of Karl May's more fictionalized story world) created their own bodies of knowledge and celebratory performances over the last century, reinterpreting and exploring the world of May's novels. The historical American West is part of the 'Primary World,' as defined by Mark Wolf, but this essay argues that the diverse versions of the West created by German fans can be understood as partly or entirely secondary, since neither May, nor many of the first generations of German fans, ever visited the American West. Both May's stories and fans' interpretations of the West were partly based on fiction, even as many tried to recreate an 'authentic' world that they had never seen. The story world created by May, and the broader fictionalized world of the American West created by German fans, was also transmedial before media convergence, tentatively before 1945 and increasingly so after 1960. But the German versions of Karl May's stories and the American West that extended across varied media during the twentieth century were often inconsistent, created by a variety of producers as a result of political regime turnover in twentieth century Germany, the expiration of copyright over May's novels, and the growing consumer culture of West Germany after 1945. The lack of any centralized editorial control over transmedia versions of both Karl May's story world and the fictionalized American West helped German fans to make the American West their own, creating their own versions of the 'Western' stories, characters, and cultures suited to the politics and culture of each decade, and circulating these interpretations among other fans.

“Die Vergangenheit ist eine weit, weit entfernte Galaxie: Die historisch-politische Konstruktion der Star Wars-Reihe” Neue Gesellschaft/Frankfurter Hefte. Vol 2015 (Issue 12).

“Tischkultur: Cooking, Food Choices, and Diet in Nazi Germany,” in Lisa Pines (ed.), Life and Times in Nazi Germany (London: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2016), 21-48.

“Was Voldemort a Nazi? Death Eater Ideology and National Socialism,” in Nancy Reagin (ed.), Harry Potter and History (New York: Wiley & Sons, 2011), 127-152.

“’I’m Buffy and You’re History’: Putting History Back Into Fan Studies,” review essay co-authored with Anne Rubenstein. Transformative Works and Cultures 6 (March, 2011).

by Nancy Reagin and Anne Rubenstein

0.1] Abstract-This essay kicks off the special historical issue of Transformative Works and Cultu... more 0.1] Abstract-This essay kicks off the special historical issue of Transformative Works and Cultures by offering an overview of the ways in which fan communities have been studied by academic historians, and how fan studies has written the history of fan communities. The essay discusses historical work done by amateur fan historians throughout the 20th century; what academic historians can offer fan communities; why academic historians could benefit from studying fandoms as part of the history of popular culture; and what fan studies as a discipline might gain from a broader historical analysis of fandoms.

"Nationale Hausarbeit? Bürgerliche Hausfrauen und konservative Politik in der Weimarer Republik" in Eva Schöck-Quinteros und Christiane Streubel (eds.) "Ihrem Volk verantwortlich". Frauen der politischen Rechten (1890–1933) (Bremen: Trafo Verlag, 2007), 131-154.

“German Brigadoon? Domesticity and Metropolitan Perceptions of Auslandsdeutschen in Southwest Africa and Eastern Europe” in Renate Bridenthal, Krista O'Donnell, and Nancy Reagin (eds.) The Heimat Abroad: the Boundaries of Germanness (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 248-266.

“Recent Work on German National Identity: Regional? Imperial? Gendered? Imaginary?” (review essay) Central European History 37 (June 2004): 245-271

“Foreign Housewives and German Linen Cabinets: Gendered National Identity in Imperial Germany,” in Ute Planert (ed.), Nation, Politik, und Geschlecht: Frauenbewegung und Nationalismus in der Moderne (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus Verlag, 2000)

“The Imagined Hausfrau: National Identity, Domesticity, and Colonialism in Imperial Germany,” Journal of Modern History, 73 (March 2001): 54-86.

“Marktordnung and Autarkic Housekeeping: Private Households Under the Nazi Four Year Plan,” German History 19 (May, 2001): 162-184

"Die Werkstatt der Hausfrau: Bürgerliche Frauenbewegung und Wohnungspolitik im Hannover der Zwanziger Jahre" in Adelheid von Saldern and Sid Auffarth (eds.), Altes und neues Wohnen: Linden und Hannover im frühen 20 Jahrhundert, (Seelze–Velber: Kallmeyersche Verlag, 1992)

"'A True Woman Can Take Care of Herself': The Debate Over Prostitution in Hanover, 1906," Central European History 24, (Winter, 1991): 347-380

"Comparing Apples and Oranges: Housewives and the Politics of Consumption in Interwar Germany" in Charles McGovern, Susan Strasser, and Mathias Judt (eds.), Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 241-262.

Books by Nancy Reagin

Sweeping the Nation: Domesticity and National Identity in Germany, 1870-1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Paperback edition, 2008

A German Women's Movement: Class and Gender in Hanover, 1880–1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995)

Nancy Reagin CV 2024

 Coordinated substantial revision of class schedule offerings, resulting in improvements in clas... more

Whose Homestead Is It? Little Houses on the Prairie and the Cultural Politics of White Colonial Settlement in the United States

Media, Place and Tourism: Imagined Worlds, 2024

This chapter examines the fandom that grew up around Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the ... more This chapter examines the fandom that grew up around Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie" series, and the memorial sites ("homesites") and heritage tourism associated with the fandom. From the time of the fandom's origins in the 1950s, fans perceived the stories and homesites as important lieux de mémoire (sites of memory) both for the imagined world of Wilder, and for the history of American white colonial settlers. Originally, the storyworld and homesites were seen as important relics of the settlement of the West and the creation of American national identity. But the resurgence of Indigenous political activism and a new understanding of the history of the American West challenged this traditional white view of American history and identity. Changing public history narratives about white settlers and Indigenous cultures fragmented white Americans’ understanding of their history. As a result, some Little House fan organizations and fan scholars –like the public history sector that they overlap with – are working through the process of including Indigenous Americans in their depictions of the historical
world where the stories are set. At the same time, conservative fans amplified their support for older, Turnerian understandings of Western history. The books and homesites have been repurposed in ways that reflect current U.S. political polarization. This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

"Socialist Indians and Capitalist Cowboys: The Uses of Westerns in both Germanies"

The Cold War and Entertainment Television (ed. Lori Maguire)

“Dances With Worlds: Karl May, ‘Indian’ Hobbyists, and German Fans of the American West since 1912,” Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 13 (May, 2016): 553-583.

This essay discusses the German fans of author Karl May's Westerns against the backdrop of a broa... more This essay discusses the German fans of author Karl May's Westerns against the backdrop of a broader community of German hobbyists devoted to the American West, as this community developed after 1912 – examining the impact of political repression, war, and the division of Germany after 1945 on these fan communities and their interpretations of the American West. German fans of the 'Old West' (both 'Indian' re-enactment hobbyists and fans of Karl May's more fictionalized story world) created their own bodies of knowledge and celebratory performances over the last century, reinterpreting and exploring the world of May's novels. The historical American West is part of the 'Primary World,' as defined by Mark Wolf, but this essay argues that the diverse versions of the West created by German fans can be understood as partly or entirely secondary, since neither May, nor many of the first generations of German fans, ever visited the American West. Both May's stories and fans' interpretations of the West were partly based on fiction, even as many tried to recreate an 'authentic' world that they had never seen. The story world created by May, and the broader fictionalized world of the American West created by German fans, was also transmedial before media convergence, tentatively before 1945 and increasingly so after 1960. But the German versions of Karl May's stories and the American West that extended across varied media during the twentieth century were often inconsistent, created by a variety of producers as a result of political regime turnover in twentieth century Germany, the expiration of copyright over May's novels, and the growing consumer culture of West Germany after 1945. The lack of any centralized editorial control over transmedia versions of both Karl May's story world and the fictionalized American West helped German fans to make the American West their own, creating their own versions of the 'Western' stories, characters, and cultures suited to the politics and culture of each decade, and circulating these interpretations among other fans.

“Die Vergangenheit ist eine weit, weit entfernte Galaxie: Die historisch-politische Konstruktion der Star Wars-Reihe” Neue Gesellschaft/Frankfurter Hefte. Vol 2015 (Issue 12).

“Tischkultur: Cooking, Food Choices, and Diet in Nazi Germany,” in Lisa Pines (ed.), Life and Times in Nazi Germany (London: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2016), 21-48.

“Was Voldemort a Nazi? Death Eater Ideology and National Socialism,” in Nancy Reagin (ed.), Harry Potter and History (New York: Wiley & Sons, 2011), 127-152.

“’I’m Buffy and You’re History’: Putting History Back Into Fan Studies,” review essay co-authored with Anne Rubenstein. Transformative Works and Cultures 6 (March, 2011).

by Nancy Reagin and Anne Rubenstein

0.1] Abstract-This essay kicks off the special historical issue of Transformative Works and Cultu... more 0.1] Abstract-This essay kicks off the special historical issue of Transformative Works and Cultures by offering an overview of the ways in which fan communities have been studied by academic historians, and how fan studies has written the history of fan communities. The essay discusses historical work done by amateur fan historians throughout the 20th century; what academic historians can offer fan communities; why academic historians could benefit from studying fandoms as part of the history of popular culture; and what fan studies as a discipline might gain from a broader historical analysis of fandoms.

"Nationale Hausarbeit? Bürgerliche Hausfrauen und konservative Politik in der Weimarer Republik" in Eva Schöck-Quinteros und Christiane Streubel (eds.) "Ihrem Volk verantwortlich". Frauen der politischen Rechten (1890–1933) (Bremen: Trafo Verlag, 2007), 131-154.

“German Brigadoon? Domesticity and Metropolitan Perceptions of Auslandsdeutschen in Southwest Africa and Eastern Europe” in Renate Bridenthal, Krista O'Donnell, and Nancy Reagin (eds.) The Heimat Abroad: the Boundaries of Germanness (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 248-266.

“Recent Work on German National Identity: Regional? Imperial? Gendered? Imaginary?” (review essay) Central European History 37 (June 2004): 245-271

“Foreign Housewives and German Linen Cabinets: Gendered National Identity in Imperial Germany,” in Ute Planert (ed.), Nation, Politik, und Geschlecht: Frauenbewegung und Nationalismus in der Moderne (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus Verlag, 2000)

“The Imagined Hausfrau: National Identity, Domesticity, and Colonialism in Imperial Germany,” Journal of Modern History, 73 (March 2001): 54-86.

“Marktordnung and Autarkic Housekeeping: Private Households Under the Nazi Four Year Plan,” German History 19 (May, 2001): 162-184

"Die Werkstatt der Hausfrau: Bürgerliche Frauenbewegung und Wohnungspolitik im Hannover der Zwanziger Jahre" in Adelheid von Saldern and Sid Auffarth (eds.), Altes und neues Wohnen: Linden und Hannover im frühen 20 Jahrhundert, (Seelze–Velber: Kallmeyersche Verlag, 1992)

"'A True Woman Can Take Care of Herself': The Debate Over Prostitution in Hanover, 1906," Central European History 24, (Winter, 1991): 347-380

"Comparing Apples and Oranges: Housewives and the Politics of Consumption in Interwar Germany" in Charles McGovern, Susan Strasser, and Mathias Judt (eds.), Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 241-262.

Sweeping the Nation: Domesticity and National Identity in Germany, 1870-1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Paperback edition, 2008

A German Women's Movement: Class and Gender in Hanover, 1880–1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995)

Transformative Works and Cultures 6 (2011), special historical issue :"Fan Works and Fan Communities in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," co-edited with Anne Rubenstein of York University

by Nancy Reagin and Anne Rubenstein

The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germaness, anthology co-edited with Renate Bridenthal and Krista O’Donnell (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005)

by Nancy Reagin, Krista O'Donnell, and Renate Bridenthal

The Hobbit and History, co-edited with Janice Liedl (New York: Wiley & Sons, 2014)

by Nancy Reagin and Janice Liedl

Star Trek and History (New York: Wiley & Sons, 2013)

Star Wars and History, co-edited with Janice Liedl (New York: Wiley & Sons, 2012)

by Nancy Reagin and Janice Liedl

Harry Potter and History (New York: Wiley & Sons, 2011)

Twilight and History (New York: Wiley & Sons, 2010

NANCY R. REAGIN. Sweeping the German Nation: Domesticity and National Identity in Germany, 1870-1945. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2007. Pp. xii, 247. $75.00

The American Historical Review, 2008

This book is a series of intriguing essays organized around the relationship between nationalism ... more This book is a series of intriguing essays organized around the relationship between nationalism and housekeeping in Germany. Nancy R. Reagin draws our attention to a cultural layer of nationalist thinking by and for women, among an "imagined community of German housewives" (p. 69). She draws on prescriptive literature by housekeeping experts, housewives' associations, and government agencies, mostly penned by self-conscious nationalists of the urban middle classes. Reagin shows how these speakers considered housekeeping to be an integral part of German national identity and their own nationalist aspirations. She argues that a bourgeois quest to "invent Germans" after unification in 1870 drove this process (p. 3).

Bourgeois women, local politics, and social change: the women's movement in Hanover, 1880-1933

A German Women's Movement: Class and Gender in Hanover, 1880-1933

Contemporary Sociology, Jul 1, 1996

... the belief in innate gender differences.2 In Ger-many, gender difference was ... the social r... more

Twilight and History

... correspondence of Stephenie Meyer and the creators of the Twilight Lexicon as incorporated in... more

Star Trek and History

Acknowledgments: A Piece of the Action: The Pleasures of Sharing Star Trek xi A Timeline of Stard... more Acknowledgments: A Piece of the Action: The Pleasures of Sharing Star Trek xi A Timeline of Stardates xiii Alan Kistler Star Trek Series and Movie Titles: A Universal Translator xxv Introduction: Time Warps and Future Histories 1 Nancy R. Reagin PART ONE Characters [Are] Welcome: Backstories 1 Riding Posse on the Final Frontier: James T. Kirk, Hero of the Old West 7 Alice L. George 2 More Than "Just Uhura": Understanding Star Trek's Lt. Uhura, Civil Rights, and Space History 22 Margaret A. Weitekamp 3 The Compassionate Country Doctor and Cold-Blooded Biomedicine: Bones, Spock, and Medicine beyond the Machine 39 Brenda Gardenour 4 Who Is Q? 57 Alan Kistler PART TWO Kirk and Spock Take on Earth History 5 The Final Reflection?: A Mirrored Empire?: Klingon History and American History 71 Lori Maguire 6 Vietnam, Star Trek, and the Real Future 87 H. Bruce Franklin 7 You're Doing It Wrong: Cause and Effect in Star Trek's Histories 109 Michael Lewis 8 If This Is the (Final) Frontier, Where Are the Natives? 125 Amy H. Sturgis 9 Terrorizing Space: Star Trek, Terrorism, and History 143 John Putman 10 To Boldly Go When No One Has Gone Before (or After): Star Trek's Timelines 158 Karma Waltonen PART THREE Future Culture 11 Shakespeare (and the Rest of the Great Books) in the Original Klingon 179 Elizabeth Baird Hardy 12 Information Technology in Star Trek: Android versus Android, iPads versus PADDs, Facebook versus the Borg 194 Brent McDonald 13 History on the Holodeck 212 Marcus Schulzke 14 Why Star Trek's Cartography Is So Stellar, or How the Borg Mapped/Changed Everything 226 Matthew D. Mingus 15 Who's the Devil?: Species Extinction and Environmentalist Thought in Star Trek 242 Dolly Jorgensen PART FOUR Other Races Have Histories Too, You Know 16 Nothing Unreal Exists: The Contradictory Logic of Vulcan History 263 Alex Robles 17 Alien Babes and Alternate Universes: The Women of Star Trek 280 M. G. DuPree 18 Klingons: Going Medieval on You 295 Christian Domenig 19 Nazis, Cardassians, and Other Villains in the Final Frontier 307 Amy Carney Negotiating the Legacy of Star Trek and Its Fans 323 Rick Worland Starfleet Academy Instructors 341 Index: Databanks 349

Star Wars and History

Introduction: The Forces of History and Histories of the Force 1 Janice Liedl Part I "Only I... more Introduction: The Forces of History and Histories of the Force 1 Janice Liedl Part I "Only Imperial Stormtroopers Are So Precise" The Wars in Star Wars 7 1 Why Rebels Triumph 9 How "Insignificant" Rebellions Can Change History William J. Astore 2 "Part of the Rebel Alliance and a Traitor" 41 Women in War and Resistance Janice Liedl and Nancy R. Reagin 3 Elegant Weapons for Civilized Ages 67 The Jedi and Warrior-Monks throughout History Terrance MacMullan 4 "A House Divided" 99 The Causes and Costs of Civil War Paul Horvath and Mark Higbee Part II "Join Me, and Together We Can Rule the Galaxy as Father and Son" Political Histories in Star Wars 123 5 I, Sidious 125 Historical Dictators and Senator Palpatine's Rise to Power Tony Keen 6 Teen Queen 151 Padme Amidala and the Power of Royal Women Janice Liedl 7 "There's Always a Bigger Fish" 177 Power, Politics, and the Rule of the Ruthless Kevin S. Decker 8 "Fear Is ...

Bestsellers of the Third Reich: Readers, Writers, and the Politics of Literature By Christian Adam. Translated by Anne Stokes. New York: Berghahn Books, 2021. Pp. xii + 297. Cloth $135.00. ISBN: 978-1800730397

Central European History

The Family in Modern Germany

German History, Oct 20, 2022

Re-living the American Frontier

Tischkultur : Food Choices, Cooking and Diet in Nazi Germany

Life and Times in Nazi Germany, 2016

The Imagined Hausfrau: National Identity, Domesticity, and Colonialism in Imperial Germany*

The Journal of Modern History, 2001

Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick, the author of the 1908 work Home Life in Germany, was a bourgeois woman of ... more Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick, the author of the 1908 work Home Life in Germany, was a bourgeois woman of German parentage who married an Englishman around the turn of the century. Accustomed to German styles of housekeeping, she had to adjust to English approaches to household management after her marriage, and she observed English domesticity with wry amusement. When she first heard a discussion of “English housekeeping,” she later wrote, “it was a new idea to me that any women in the world except the Germans kept house at all. If you live among Germans when you are young you adopt this view quite insensibly and without argument.”1 Bourgeois English housewives, Mrs. Sidgwick wrote, left much of their work to the servants and did not maintain really clean houses. Although she spent most of her adult life in England, Mrs. Sidgwick clearly admired and preferred the community of German bourgeois Hausfrauen to which her mother, aunts, and cousins belonged. It was a community that was at least partly imagined, in the sense defined by Benedict Anderson, because most of its members would never meet each other and yet thought of themselves as belonging to a common group.2 Reading Mrs. Sidgwick’s work (and earlier literature produced by nineteenth-century bourgeois German women) makes it clear that many considered themselves to be part of a community of German bourgeois Hausfrauen and that this community helped define the na-

Harry Potter and History

Page 1. / /\'> o< Harry Potter Page 2. .0001-QQ-r~=" WILEY POP CULTURE AND HISTOR... more

The Heimat Abroad