Dr. Jana Weiß is a historian and DAAD Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. With a focus on U.S. and transatlantic history, her research interests include 19th and 20th century immigration, knowledge, and religious history as well as the history of racism.
After studying at the University of Bremen, she received her PhD in 2013 at the University of Münster with a study on the role and functions of civil religion on U.S.-American patriotic holidays after 1945. Her dissertation highlights the contested public debates over the entanglements of patriotism, religion, and politics with regard to (inter)national crises such as the Cold War in an increasingly multicultural and multireligious nation (Fly the Flag and Give Thanks to God. Zivilreligion an US-amerikanischen patriotischen Feiertagen, 1945-1992, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2015). Besides publishing several articles in anthologies and journals such as the Journal of American Studies, Amerikastudien / American Studies, Contemporary Church History, and Zeithistorische Forschung, she is the co-editor of History of Intellectual Culture. International Yearbook of Knowledge and Society. Currently, she is working on a manuscript (habilitation) titled “The Lager Beer Revolution in the United States: The History of Beer and German-Americans as a Reinvention of Ethnicity, Knowledge, and Consumption”, analyzing the cultural and technological transfer of German brewing to the U.S. in the 19th century. In addition, she is working on a new project focusing on contesting truths in the struggle for political and social participation of African Americans. Her research has been generously funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C.