Dr. Michelle Lynn Kahn
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Profile
Dr. Michelle Lynn Kahn is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Richmond. She is a scholar of the global and transnational history of Germany after 1945, with thematic expertise in far-right extremism, migration, and racism.
Dr. Kahn currently researches the transnational far right and is writing a book about German and American neo-Nazis. This book investigates the deep, dark web of transatlantic connections between German and American neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, and white supremacists from the end of World War II in 1945 through the rise of the internet era in the 1990s. The book reframes our understanding of today’s global far right by uncovering understudied developments: the resurgence of German neo-Nazism was not only the homegrown or inevitable successor to the Third Reich but was also heavily influenced by the United States. Relatedly, Dr. Kahn is tracing German neo-Nazis’ connections to far-right extremists across the globe, including in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa.
Her previous book, Foreign in Two Homelands: Racism, Return Migration, and Turkish-German History (Cambridge University Press, 2024), explores the transnational history of Turkish migrants, Germany’s largest ethnic minority, who arrived as “guest workers” (Gastarbeiter) between 1961 and 1973. By the 1980s, amid rising racism, neo-Nazis and ordinary Germans blamed Turks for unemployment, criticized their Muslim faith, and argued they could never integrate. In 1983, policymakers enacted a controversial law: paying Turks to leave. Thus commenced one of modern Europe's largest and fastest waves of remigration: within one year, 15% of the migrants—250,000 men, women, and children—returned to Turkey. Their homeland, however, ostracized them as culturally estranged “Germanized Turks” (Almancı). Through archival research and oral history interviews in both countries and languages, the book highlights migrants’ personal stories and reveals how many felt foreign in two homelands.
Dr. Kahn is also co-editing a volume, tentatively titled Racism and Anti-Racism in Divided Germany, which brings together new scholarship on the history of racialization and anti-racist activism in both East and West Germany during the Cold War and since unification, focusing on the 1970s to 1990s.
Dr. Kahn was awarded the 2022 Chester Penn Higby Prize of the American Historical Association’s Modern Europe Section, as well as the 2019 Fritz Stern Prize of the German Historical Institute. Her work has been generously supported by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Historical Association, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Central European History Society, among others. From 2015 to 2017, she was a Research Associate at the Documentation Centre and Museum of Migration to Germany (DOMiD e.V.). She is an Editor of the journal Contemporary European History, and she serves on the Editorial Board of The New Fascism Syllabus.
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Grants and Fellowships
Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History (Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung, ZZF). Summer Fellowship. 2024.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. William J. Lowenberg Fellowship on America, the Holocaust, and Jews. 2021-22.
American Historical Association. Bernadotte E. Schmitt Grant. 2021.
Central European History Society. Research Grant. 2018. Haas Center for Public Service. Stanford University. Public Service Fellowship. 2017-18.
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. German Chancellor Fellowship. 2015-16.
Fulbright Scholarship. U.S. State Department (declined). 2015-16.
The Europe Center. Stanford University. Research Grant. 2015 and 2014.
Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies. Stanford University. Travel Grant. 2014.
Critical Language Scholarship (Turkish). U.S. State Department (declined). 2013. Beinecke Scholarship. 2012-2017.
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Awards
Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award. University of Richmond. Schools of Arts and Sciences. 2024.
Chester Penn Higby Prize. American Historical Association. 2022
Faculty Member of the Year Award. Omicron Delta Kappa. University of Richmond, 2020
Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize. German Historical Institute. 2019
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Institutional Service
Editor. Contemporary European History. 2025-present.
Editorial Board Member. Spektrum: Publications of the German Studies Association. 2024-present.
Prize Committee Chair. Chester Penn Higby Prize. 2024.
Editorial Board Member. The New Fascism Syllabus. 2020-present.
Program Committee Member. German Studies Association Annual Conference. 2020-2022.
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Grants and Fellowships
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Publications
Books
Foreign in Two Homelands: Racism, Return Migration, and Turkish-German History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024) [download free PDF or purchase print copy]
Neo-Nazis in Germany and the U.S.: An Entangled History of Hate, 1945-2000 (monograph, in progress)
Racism and Anti-Racism in Divided Germany, co-edited with Lauren Stokes [under review]
Journal Articles“Antisemitism, Holocaust Denial, and Germany’s Far Right: How the AfD Tiptoes around Nazism.” The Journal of Holocaust Research. Vol. 36, no. 2-3 (Jun. 2022): 164-185 [read]
“Rethinking Central Europe as a Migration Space: From the Ottoman Empire through the Cold War and the Refugee Crisis.” Central European History. Vol. 55, no. 1 (Mar. 2022): 118-137 [read]
“The American Influence on German Neo-Nazism: An Entangled History of Hate, 1970s-1990s.” The Journal of Holocaust Research. Vol. 35, no. 2 (May 2021): 91-105 [read]
“The Long Road Home: Vacations and the Making of the ‘Germanized Turk’ Across Cold War Europe.” The Journal of Modern History. Vol. 93, no. 1 (Mar. 2021): 109-149 [read]
“Between Ausländer and Almancı: The Transnational History of Turkish-German Migration.” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute. Vol. 66 (Spring 2020): 53-82 [read]
Book Chapters“Neo-Nazism in Transnational Perspective: North America, Western Europe, and the Middle East.” In The Routledge History of Global Nazism, edited by Jennifer Evans, Eric Kurlander, Julia Torrie, and Jonathan Wiesen (London: Routledge, under contract) [forthcoming]
Blogs“Rebels against the Homeland: Turkish Guest Workers in 1980s West German Anthropology,” Migrant Knowledge Blog of the German Historical Institute (Oct. 2019) [read]
“The Cologne Sexual Assaults in Historical Perspective,” Notches: (Re)marks on the History of Sexuality (Jan. 2016) [read]
ReviewsLauren Stokes, Fear of the Family: Guest Workers and Family Migration in the Federal Republic of Germany, for The American Historical Review, Vol. 130, no. 1 (March 2025): 483-485 [read]
Sara Pugach, African Students in East Germany, 1949-1975, for Cold War History, Vol. 23, no. 2 (May 2023) [read]
Stefan Zeppenfeld, Vom Gast zum Gastwirt? Türkische Arbeitswelten in West-Berlin, for German Studies Review. Vol. 45, no. 3 (Oct. 2022): 602-604 [read]
Ayşe Parla, Precarious Hope: Migration and the Limits of Belonging in Turkey, in Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies, Vol. 9, no. 1 (2022): 181-184 [read]
Christopher A. Molnar, Memory, Politics, and Yugoslav Migrations to Postwar Germany, for German Politics and Society. Vol. 39, no. 2 (Summer 2021): 101-103 [read]
Gaby Zipfel, et al., In Plain Sight: Exploring the Field of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict, for The Journal of the History of Sexuality. Vol. 30, no. 2 (May 2021): 321-323 [read]
Jennifer A. Miller, Turkish Guest Workers in Germany: Hidden Lives and Contested Borders, 1960s-1980, for Central European History. Vol. 53, no. 2 (Sept. 2020): 695-697 [read]
Sarah Thomsen Vierra, Turkish Germans in the Federal Republic of Germany: Immigration, Space, and Belonging, 1961-1990, for German History. Vol. 38, no. 1 (Mar. 2020): 181-182 [read]
Edith Sheffer, Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna, for H-Diplo. Introduction to roundtable, with Benjamin P. Hein and Samuel Clowes Huneke. (Nov. 2019) [read]
Rita Chin, The Crisis of Multiculturalism in Europe: A History, for EuropeNow. Council for European Studies (Feb. 2018) [read]