EP #118 - 9.22.2020 Authoritarianism in the COVID-19 Epidemic

Today we will talk about authoritarianism in the time of COVID-19 with historians Richard Bodek and Richard E. Frankel.

Richard Bodek is professor of History at the College of Charleston.  His research and teaching interests roam widely from science fiction to detective fiction to popular culture to radical politics to violence. He has taught courses in all of these areas. He has also written about all of them. His interest in intellectual history prompted his co-edited volume, The Fruits of Exile: Central European Intellectual Immigration to America in the Age of Fascism. His continuing interest in cultural anthropology emerges in the co-edited volume, Maroonage/Marronage: Maroons in Culture, History, and Society. Finally, his love of the ‘Golden Twenties’ prompted his edited translation of Claire Bergmann’s 1932 German novel (banned by the Nazis), Was wird aus deinen Kindern, Pitt? (What Will Become of the Children?). At present, he is at work on a history of murder in Occupied Germany.

Richard E. Frankel is currently Associate Professor of modern German history and the Sagrera Family Memorial/BORSF Endowed Professor in History at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His research interests center on nationalism, antisemitism, immigration, and political culture. His first book was Bismarck’s Shadow: The Crisis of German Leadership and the Transformation of the German Right, 1898-1945 with Berg Publishers. His latest book, States of Exclusion: A New Wave of Fascism uses German history—particularly the period of the Third Reich—to help us better understand the current situation in Trump’s America. Frankel is now seeking to understand antisemitism from an even broader, global perspective. He is currently at work on a new book-length project tentatively titled Globalizing Hate: The Impact of Globalization on Modern Antisemitism in Germany and the United States, 1880-1914.