Dr Timo Schrader
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Office: |
H306, Third Floor, Humanities Building |
I am a Fritz Thyssen Foundation Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Warwick. I completed my PhD in 2018 and my first monograph entitled Loisaida as Urban Laboratory: Puerto Rican Community Activism in New York will be published in 2020 by the University of Georgia Press. This book offers the first in-depth analysis of the network of Puerto Rican community activism in the Lower East Side from 1964 to 2001. The community of Loisaida organized itself to fight against postwar urban deindustrialization, housing disinvestment, and gentrification, which threatened to displace an entire generation of Puerto Ricans who migrated to this New York neighborhood and tried to make it their home. Using an amalgam of unprocessed organizational archives, oral histories, ephemera, and neighborhood publications, this book is recreating the history of community action in Loisaida. Focusing on key institutions and community groups that mobilized residents and built a lasting activist network, Loisaida as Urban Laboratory demonstrates how community groups pioneered a methodology for more sustainable community activism. These activists turned Loisaida into their laboratory, constantly experimenting with and adapting new strategies to put up a solid defense against absentee landlords, greedy developers, opportunist politicians, and an era of increased policing of urban space.
Research
I am currently working on my second major research project: "Super Citizenship: American Veterans and the Fight for Human Rights." This project will produce the first comprehensive history of veteran activism and protest in the US. Whenever soldiers have returned home from a conflict, they have attempted to re-integrate into civilian life in the US. However, veterans throughout US conflicts have emerged to claim, complicate, or contest American citizenship by engaging in protests or activist causes—often opposing the very government that enlisted them. Soldiers are trained to serve and protect but what do veterans do with this sense of duty after war? Whether it is segregation, land ownership, or LGBT rights, ex-soldiers have historically been present to lend their status as veterans to support numerous human rights issues. This project contends that US veterans have played a major role in shaping American society since World War I, despite a significant lack of scholarly attention to the history of veterans. In exploring the intersections of citizenship, activism, and veterans, this project will provide a radically new perspective on the limits and opportunities of US citizenship and the involvement of veterans in social movements.
Education
2014–2018: PhD in American history, University of Nottingham
2013–2014: MA in American studies at the University of Nottingham
2009–2013: BA in English and educational sciences at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
Academic Profile
2019–2021: Fritz Thyssen Foundation Visiting Research Fellowship at the University of Warwick
2019–2020: Associate Tutor at the University of Leicester
2019: Research Associate in the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham
2018–2019: Global Slavery Index Research Associate in the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham
2018–2019: Course Leader of the MA Slavery and Liberation at the University of Nottingham
2018–2019: Teaching Affiliate at the University of Nottingham
2018: Research Associate in the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham
2017–2018: Associate Lecturer at the University of Lincoln
2017: Research Associate on the AHRC-funded project "Antislavery Usable Past" at the University of Nottingham
2017: Teaching Affiliate at the University of Nottingham
2016–2017: Research Assistant on a British Academy-funded Rising Star Grant at the University of Nottingham
2015–2017: Co-director of the Centre for Research in Race and Rights at the University of Nottingham
2014–2017: Founder and Coordinator of the annual American Studies Retreat
2012–2013: Student Assistant at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies
2010–2011: ERASMUS exchange year at Loughborough University
Publications
Timo Schrader, Loisaida as Urban Laboratory: Puerto Rican Community Activism in New York (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2020).
Timo Schrader, "The Colors of Loisaida: Embedding Murals in Community Activism," Journal of Urban History 44, no. 3 (May 2018), 519–532. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0096144217699173.
Timo Schrader, "Education as a Human Right: the Real Great Society and a Pedagogy of Activism," Journal for the Study of Radicalism 12, no. 1 (Spring 2018), 123–159. https://doi.org/10.14321/jstudradi.12.1.0123.
Timo Schrader, "That Special Mess: El Spirit Republic de Puerto Rico and the Decolonization of the Imaginary," Anglistica/AION 20, no. 1 (November 2017), 15–30. https://doi.org/10.19231/angl-aion.201613.
Timo Schrader, book review of Sonia Song-Ha Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement: Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in New York City (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), Journal of American Studies 50, no. 4 (November 2016).
Timo Schrader, book review of Eileen J. Suárez Findlay, We Are Left Without a Father Here: Masculinity, Domesticity, and Migration in Postwar Puerto Rico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), Gender & History 28, no. 2 (August 2016), 545-546.
Selected Awards and Scholarships
2020: Institute of Advanced Study Award, University of Warwick
2019: Research Fellowship, Fritz Thyssen Foundation
2018: Research Grant, Roosevelt Institute for American Studies
2016: Vice-Chancellor's Medal, University of Nottingham
2016: Cascade Grant, University of Nottingham
2016: Historians of Twentieth Century United States Postgraduate Travel Award
2015: Royal Historical Society Conference Travel Award
2015: Economic History Society Bursary Scheme
2015: Postgraduate Transatlantic Travel Grant, European Association for American Studies
2015: The Elizabeth and Elisha Atkins Postgraduate Travel Award, British Association for American Studies
2014: Vice-Chancellor's Scholarship for Research Excellence, University of Nottingham
2010: ERASMUS Scholarship, European Commission