The annual Archival Research Lecture, sponsored by the BGC Archives
of Wheaton College, will be given this year by Dr.
Uta Balbier of the German Historical
Institute of Washington, DC. She will be speaking on “‘Selling
God and Coca-Cola’: Billy Graham in Germany".
She will be speaking Thursday, October 22nd, at 7pm in the Wilson Suite on the 4th floor of the Billy Graham Center, 500 E. College Avenue at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, USA.
How do you do historical research in an archives? What is it like to reconstruct a picture of past from fragments such as newspaper clippings, letters, diaries, photos? These are some of the general themes of the Archival Research Lectures. Every year a scholar who has worked in the BGC Archives talks about his/her own experiences doing research (at the BGC Archives and other places) and describes some of the fruits of that research. This year Dr. Balbier will talk about the history of post-war Youth for Christ and Billy Graham’s evangelistic campaigns in Germany from the viewpoint of both the American and German participants; how the meetings challenged and influenced the identity of German Protestantism; and the anti-Americanism and resentments that Graham was facing in Germany and how and why these softened over the years.
There will be a discussion period after the talk, followed by a reception with food and beverage (courtesty of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals). The lecture is open to the public and admission is free.
There will also be an exhibit of scrapbooks, documents, photos and films, and other documents from the BGC Archives illustrating American evangelistic efforts in Germany from the late 1940s to the 1990s.
Dr. Balbier is a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington DC. Her research interests include the History of Sports, Modern U.S. and German History, History of Religion, and Transnational History. She studied history, political sciences, and journalism at Münster and Hull, UK and received her PhD in Modern History from the University of Potsdam in 2005. She is the author of Kalter Krieg auf der Aschenbahn. Deutsch-deutscher Sport 1950-72, eine politische Geschichte (Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn) and co-editor of Umworbener Klassenfeind. Das Verhältnis der DDR zu den USA (Berlin: Ch.Links, 2006). She was a research fellow at the Hamburg Institute of Social Research and taught at Jacobs University, Bremen.