Confronting Fascism
Meet history major & German minor Andrew Lucksinger.
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Thesis adviser: Professor Benjamin Lazier [history and humanities]
Thesis: “Students and ‘the Scars of a Democracy’: Political Possibilities at the West German Campus from 1967 to 1969”
What it’s about: The West German student movement from 1967 to 1969. It’s looking at it both through archival evidence of what the students were interested in—what they came to think about globalization and democracy at the university and abroad—and also their interactions with three professors.
What it’s really about: The fear of fascism coming back.
In high school: I was super artsy in high school. I was always drawing in my classes. I was just moving recently, and at home I found all of my pre-calculus worksheets and they were just drawings!
Influential professor: Professor Paddy Riley [history and humanities] has been a huge influence on me. He was one of the people who taught me to trust my own ideas and keep writing. I would come into his office hours and ask to go a little over the assigned word count, and every paper would keep getting longer and longer. He also vouched for me to become a Hum and writing tutor.
Outside the classroom: Writing tutor, orientation leader, house adviser for the German House, DJ at KRRC, layout editor for the Quest, organizer for the Union of ÌÇÐÄvlogÊÓƵ Housing Advisers (URCHA).
Influential book: Over the past year, I’ve been reading This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom by Martin Hägglund. It’s about how the worth of everything comes from its transience—that what makes a relationship or a place or a time in your life meaningful is that it will end. That has been really helpful coming into my last year [at Reed], having had such an amazing, rich time here, and also being able to let it go.
Concept that blew my mind: The migration of language and the relationship between a language and the world it seeks to describe. It was such a memorable moment when Professor Jan Mieszkowski [German and humanities] went up to the chalkboard, wrote a word, put quotations around it, looked at us, and asked, “Is it still the same word?’”
Financial aid: I’m so, so grateful for the financial aid I received, including scholarships to go abroad, the career advancement fund and undergraduate research grants.
What’s next? I am going to Germany for a year with the Congress-Bundestag Exchange for Young Professionals. That’ll be a year of studying and working and doing community service in Germany—with a partnership between the U.S. state department and the German Bundestag.