Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Department of Cultural History and Theory

Former Teaching and Research Areas

History of Aesthetic Thinking

Prof. em. Dr. Renate Reschke. Her research focuses on the history of aesthetics in the 18th and 19th century, German and European classicism, Nietzsche studies and the popular reception of antiquity in the 19th and 20th century.

Cultural History

Prof. em. Dr. Thomas Macho has been Professor of Cultural History since 1993. His influential studies on cultural techniques, on the history of chronology, on the cultural, visual and media history of death and on the history of cultural-technical modelling of the relationship between humans and animals have shaped the profile of Cultural History and Theory in Berlin.

Cultural Theory with Focus on Gender and History

Prof. em. Dr. Christina von Braun has been Professor of Cultural Theory with Emphasis on Gender and History since 1993. She has made a name for herself not only as a writer and film maker, but also with her research on gender theory in the context of Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions, as well as with her contributions to feminist media theory.

Cultural Theory and History of Mentality

Prof. em. Dr. Hartmut Böhme has been Professor of Cultural Theory and History of Mentality since 1993. In addition to his research on the cultural history of nature and of the elements, on the anthropology of the senses and of emotions, as well as on the afterlife of antiquity, Hartmut Böhme has developed “a different theory of modernity” through his pioneering studies on the history and theory of fetishism.