Andreas Rödder’s recent 21.1. Eine kurze Geschichte der Gegenwart [21.1. A Brief History of the Present] (C.H. Beck, 2023) offers a fascinating historical analysis of our time. The book paints an impressive picture of how our greatly accelerated, globalized, and digitalized world has been made. The Review of Democracy hosted the session Discussing the History of the Present with Andreas Rödder on November 8 to examine key arguments in this new publication and reflect on issues of central significance in contemporary history.
In this special panel, Prof. Rödder – who holds the chair for Modern and Contemporary History at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz – has been in conversation with four other leading contemporary historians, Camilo Erlichman (Assistant Professor at the Department of History, Maastricht University), Sonja Levsen (Professor for Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Tübingen), Michal Kopeček (Head of the Department for History of Ideas and Concepts, Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences), and Aino Rosa Kristina Spohr (Helmut Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC and permanent faculty of the Department of International History at the London School of Economics). The panel has been moderated by RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó (Assistant Professor at the Department of History, Maastricht University).
