Frederik Blank
PhD Candidate
Education
2020-2023 | Master of Arts in North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin |
2022 | Semester abroad in Canadian History and Native Studies, University of Alberta |
2017-2021 | Bachelor of Arts in History, Politics, and Sociology, University of Potsdam |
Awards and Grants
2024 | Doctoral scholarship, Graduate School of North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin |
2022 | Promos (DAAD) scholarship, awarded by Freie Universität Berlin for semester abroad at University of Alberta |
2022 | Travel Grant, Ernst-Reuter-Gesellschaft e.V. |
2022 | Promos (DAAD) travel grant, awarded by Freie Universität |
Academic Appointments, Scientific Activities & Outreach
- Co-Speaker of Emerging Scholars Forum of the Association for Canadian Studies in German-speaking countries *GKS)
- Conference Organization: annual conference of Emerging Scholars Forum of the Association for Canadian Studies in German-speaking Countries (GKS), Contested Canada: Navigating Past, Present and Future Sovereignties, 2023, Freie Universität Berlin
- Conference Organization: annual interdisciplinary graduate conference of the History, Classics, and Religion Graduate Students' Association (HCRGSA), Societies in Crisis: Reactions, Reslience, and Resolutions, 2023, University of Alberta
Memberships
- Association for Canadian Studies in German-speaking Countries (GKS)
Research Interests
- German Canadian Studies
- Canadian Prairie History
- Indigenous-Settler Encounters
- Settler Colonialism
- Indigenous Studies
Ph.D. Project
German Canadians as Settler Colonists: Transatlantic Migration and German-Indigenous Encounters on the Canadian Prairies, 1890-1940
My PhD project explores German-Indigenous encounters on the Canadian prairies from 1890 to 1940, and responds to calls to include settler colonial perspectives in a changing historiography of German Canadians. So far ethnic histories on German Canadians have not studied German Canadians as settler colonists. Yet, as this PhD project argues, German Canadians did contribute and benefit from settler colonialism in multifaceted ways. Indigenous removal to reserves made room for German migrants and their homesteads, German priests worked in residential schools, and German migrants were involved in resource extractivism on the Canadian prairies. German migration to Canada thus created complicities in processes of Indigenous dispossession on different levels. By tracing German-Indigenous interactions in Canada, I propose to include German settler colonial movements in general discourses on German colonialism, answering calls from Sebastian Conrad, Matthew Fitzpatrick and Peter Monteath for an unbound and interaction focused history of German colonial activity.
Publications
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Review of The Boundaries of Ethnicity. German Immigration and the Language of Belonging in Ontario, by Benjamin Bryce, 2022, 244pp. Zeitschrift für Kanada-Studien 44, 2024: 117-118.
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Review of Canada at a Crossroads: Boundaries, Bridges, and Laissez-Faire Racism in Indigenous-Settler Relations, by Jeffrey S. Denis, 2020, 365pp. Past Imperfect 25, 2023: 77-81. https://doi.org/10.21971/pi29395.