Dr. David Bebnowski
Dr. David Bebnowski is a contemporary historian and social scientist. He has been an associated postdoctoral researcher in the History Department at the John F. Kennedy Institute since spring 2024, teaching classes at BA and MA level since 2025. During the winter term of 2026/27, he will be teaching a class on labor and the left in US history.
Over the course of his professional career, Dr. Bebnowski has worked at different German Universities and research institutes such as the LMU Munich (postdoc in an ERC project), Leibniz-ZZF Potsdam and University of Goettingen. He has received various prices and fellowships and was a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, and has most recently been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies “Applied Humanities” at the Humboldt University Berlin in Summer 2026.
Dr. Bebnowski is currently working on his “second book” that centers the history of feminist printed matter (“Druckerzeugnisse”: manifestos and pamphlets that are produced using printing processes and are intended to generate political pressure) in the USA and Germany during the first three waves of feminism (1848 – 1995). His areas of expertise include the contemporary history of Germany and the U.S., the history of the New Left, and the history of right-wing politics and right-wing populism. He earned his PhD in 2020 at the University of Potsdam. His dissertation “Kämpfe mit Marx”, a history of the German New Left and academic Marxism based on two Marxist journals, was published in 2021. He has also worked and published on the history and politics of the German right-wing party AfD.
Please visit David Bebnowski’s personal homepage for more information. Please get in touch to arrange an appointment or to discuss supervising your BA or MA thesis.
Undergraduate:
Labor and the Left, David Bebnowski, Mondays 18:00-20:00
In U.S. politics, the left has gained significant momentum over the past decade, thanks to presidential campaigns like Bernie Sanders', as well as the rise of younger left-leaning politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani, and social movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. However, this was not always the case. From a historical perspective, the U.S. left differs considerably from its European, South American, and Asian counterparts due to its lack of a strong socialist political current. However, different left-wing traditions exist in U.S. history, notably strong labor unions. By reviewing the history of labor and the left in the 19th and 20th centuries, we will examine the traditions, currents, and shifting contours of the U.S. left and its evolving political frameworks.
Summer Semester 2026Graduate:
The American Right from the 1950s to the 1990s, David Bebnowski, Fridays, 12:00-14:00
Research Interests
- History of Germany and the U.S. in the 19th and 20th Century
- Intellectual History
- Gender History
- History of Left Politics
- History of the New Right