Deborah Cuccia

Studium und wissenschaftlicher Werdegang

Geboren in Florenz 

1997-2002           Humanistisches Gymnasium „Dante Alighieri“

2002-2011            Università degli Studi di Firenze

                             B.A. in Fremdsprachen und Literaturen (Romanistik)

                             M.A. in Fremdsprachen und Literaturen (Romanistik und Germanistik)

                             B.A. in Internationalen Studien (Hauptfach Geschichte)

                             M.A. in Internationalen Beziehungen (Hauptfach Geschichte)

                             Postgraduierter Studiengang in „International Careers“

2008                     Studienaufenthalt an der Université de Perpignan Via Domitia (UPVD), Perpignan, Frankreich

2012-2020            Selbstständige Tätigkeit als Übersetzerin, Dolmetscherin und Sprachlehrerin

2014-2017            Università degli Studi di Firenze – Stiftung Universität Hildesheim

Promotion (co-tutelle)  in Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts

Seit 2019              Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Institut für Geschichte der Stiftung Universität Hildesheim

Schwerpunkte in Forschung und Lehre

  • (Vergleichende) Europäische Geschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts
  • Deutsche und italienische Geschichte
  • Zeitgeschichte Südeuropas
  • Geschichte der Europäischen Integration
  • Geschichte des Kalten Krieges
  • Geschichte der Internationalen Beziehungen (20. Jahrhundert)
  • Transnationale Geschichte

Preise & Auszeichnungen 

  • 2011 Leistungsstipendium der Region Toscana 
  • 2013-2016 Doktoratsstipendium der Universität Florenz
  • 2014 Stipendiatin des Goethe Instituts 
  • 2016 Stipendiatin des DAAD

Ausgewählte Publikationen

  • Deborah Cuccia, There are two German States and two must remain? Italy and the long Path from the German Question to the Re-unification, Reihe Historische Europa-Studien: Geschichte in Erfahrung, Gegenwart und Zukunft, Hildesheim/Zürich/New York 2019.
  • Michael Gehler/Deborah Cuccia/Philipp Strobl (Hrsg.), Geschichte Europas und seine Integration schreiben. Hildesheimer Europagespräche VI, Hildesheim/ Zürich/New York (in Vorbereitung)
  • Michael Gehler (Hg.), Deborah Cuccia/Federico Scarano/E-R. Unterhiner (unter Mitarbeit von), Akten zur Südtirol-Politik 1945-1958: Ringen um erstes Autonomiestatut und Optantendekret 1947/48, Innsbruck 2020
  • The European Common House: The Soviet Prescription for Reshaping Europe, in: Michael Gehler/Winfried Loth (Hrsg.), Deborah Cuccia (unter Mitarbeit von), Reshaping Europe. Political, Economic and Monetary Union, Baden-Baden 2020
  • Italien und die deutsche Einheit 1989-1990, in: Michael Gehler/Maximilian Graf (eds), Europa und die deutsche Einheit: Beobachtungen, Entscheidungen und Folgen, Göttingen 2017   
  • D. Cuccia, Rezension von C. Liermann-Traniello et al., Italien, Deutschland und die europäische Einheit. Zum 30-jährigen Jubiläum des Berliner Mauerfalls, Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart in: Sehepunkte 20 (2020) Nr. 6, http://www.sehepunkte.de/2020/06/33590.html
  • D. Cuccia, “1984: Un Annus Horribilis per Italia e Germania?”, in: Ventunesimo Secolo 45/2019, S.137-157
  • The Genscher-Colombo Plan: A Forgotten Page in the European Integration History, in: Journal of European Integration History 24 (1), 2018, S. 59-78

CV (deutsch) (pdf)

CV (english) (pdf)

Südeuropas Narrative im Wandel: Zwischen Imagination und Wirkmächtigkeit 1974-1986

Deborah Cuccia

January 2021 marked the thirty-fifth anniversary of Portugal and Spain joining the European Communities, the 40th jubilee will be commemorated in a few years. The balance of these decades of EU-membership is a mixed one. The banking and financial market crisis of 2008 has been instrumental to show the amount of stereotypes, which still dominate the relationship between Northern and Southern European Member States. Narratives provided by German, Austrian, Dutch and Danish media among others echoed the re-emergence of images, which were thought to have long since been removed.  The ongoing corona-pandemic has, in turn, underlined how fragile the full functioning of the Union can be and how the lack of mutual knowledge and understanding between Member States can affect its internal cohesion. Historical studies can be of significant help in order to provide more depth and better context to the current debate by trying and retracing the historical roots of this European North-South divide.

 

The Mediterranean has traditionally had a strong figurative power, embodied by a multitude of images, which imply specific space hierarchies, narratives and mental maps. Southern Europe is, by contrast, a comparatively new research field, which has, though, inherited the long-term narratives on the Mediterranean. This research will delve into the significance of narratives and mental maps as well as into the question, whether it is scientifically correct to address the countries, which border the northern shores of the Mediterranean as ‘Southern Europe’ or whether this concept is the projection of the Northern imagination.

This project is structured around different methodological axes: European Integration and Cold War studies, History of International Relations, Cultural History, Area Studies and Geography. It should be a study with cross-regional comparative and transregional perspectives. It will analyse and discuss the meaning attached in Germany and Austria to Southern Europe and the related narratives in one selected case study, the Enlargement of the European Communities to Portugal and Spain, thereby retracing and deconstructing relevant mental maps as well as the criteria they were built on. It will discuss how historical-spatial narratives are functional to the creation and deconstruction, to the rooting and the preservation of collective representations within Europe. It will then try to assess their significance in European integration dynamics an in the current cultural debate.

 

The aim of this project is an improved understanding of how specific historical moments can shape the narratives attached to areas that are critical to European integration and European memory. It will delve into the interaction between different national narratives, linked to specific social and cultural contexts and wonder whether they are an obstacle to the process of transnationalisation of European memories and to the formation of self-critical memories capable of developing a sense of common European belonging.