Dr. Benita Blessing is assistant professor of modern European history. Her research interests focus on the nexus of social policy and cultural practices, with particular emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches to understanding how societies construct and disseminate shared knowledge. Key areas of analysis include the history of education, film studies, gender and sexuality, memory and consciousness, children's studies, folk tales, and the history of science. Blessing's research methodologies center on qualitative and quantitative analysis of written and visual texts, oral history, game theory, behavior of organizations, cultural and linguistic studies, feminist theory, and taxonomies and technologies of knowledge.

Her first book, The Antifascist Classroom: Denazification in Soviet-occupied Germany, 1945-1949 appeared with Palgrave in 2006. This study examined the role of education in post-World War II eastern Germany's attempts to develop a unique antifascist consciousness that was secular, socialist-humanist, and gender-neutral.

Blessing is currently finishing her second book manuscript, 'Princes and Princesses under Socialism: East German Children's Films, 1946-1990.' Based on the over 300 children's and young people's films produced by the East German state-owned film company DEFA, the study looks through and beyond the cinematic lens of DEFA to demonstrate that a theoretical underpinning of badly-played game theory on the part of the state kept it limited to a few choices in decision-making while individual action occurred in a broader range of choices and pay-offs. Conceptualizing film as more than only a representation of reality, 'Princes and Princesses' demonstrates that the boundaries of documentary and entertainment films are at best blurry, particularly when it comes to interpreting the meaning of happily ever after on the big screen.

Future projects include a history of anti-Darwinist thought in the post-World War II period. "The case of the tanned salamander: Anti-Darwinian experiments and the subterranean laboratory in Moulis, France, 1945-1989" aims to rethink the history of scientific competition during the Cold War as extending beyond a mere East (communist) vs. West (capitalist) dichotomy, using the case study of the creation and development of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique-Moulis subterranean research laboratory. Also in progress is a history of children's sleep rituals in nineteenth-century Europe, an area of research that extends into Blessing's work on the meaning of vampires in myths and text from the medieval period to the present as a public forum for the discussion of science and ethics throughout history.

Blessing is responsible for courses on European gender and socio-cultural history, including modern Germany, modern France, Women Warriors, Students and Revolution, History of Sexuality, and History of Vampires in Myth and Text. She has won the University Professor award for excellence in undergraduate teaching and the Office of Nationally Competitive Awards service award for outstanding mentoring of students.

She graduated from Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, with a B.A. in German and French. She also studied at Institut d'Etudes Européennes, Paris, France. She was awarded her M.A. in International Policy Studies and German from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California. Blessing received a joint Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in history and educational policy studies.

Blessing was a Fulbright senior research scholar to Berlin; a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation fellow; a post-doctoral scholar at the European History Institute in Mainz, Germany; a DAAD doctoral fellow at the Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany; and a visiting researcher with the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. She has taught previously at New York University – Florence. She is a member of the History of Education Society, American Historical Association, German Studies Association, and American Educational Research Association. She serves as H-German book and media review editor.

Blessing also works with the language and cultural immersion program of Concordia Language Villages for young people (Concordia College, Minnesota), where she has been summer dean of the Italian village, instructor of German history in the German village, and curriculum director for the French village. She is fluent in Italian, German and French, and has reading knowledge of several other languages.

Click here for her homepage: http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~blessing/