Cynthia Miller-Idriss

Cynthia Miller-Idriss

New York University, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development

Associate Professor of International Education and Educational Sociology

Phone: 212-992-9374
Email: cmi1@nyu.edu
Office Hours: on sabbatical 2011-12

• Humanities and Social Sciences
• International Education
• Sociology of Education (including Education Policy)

I conduct research on a range of topics related to identity, nationalism, right-wing extremism, citizenship, and education in international and comparative contexts. I am currently the PI or co-PI for three major research projects.

My first project, which has been funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, will result in a book tentatively titled Performing Extremism: Youth Culture and the New Right-Wing in Germany. The book traces the emergence of a third generation of post World War II right-wing extremists, examining the recent escalation in the use of symbols and codes among right-wing extremist and neo-Nazi youth in Germany in the form of tattoos, slogans, t-shirts, and particular brands of clothing, sneakers, or music labels. I contend that an examination of the signification, decontextualization and reappropriation of right-wing extremist symbols and codes will reveal patterns in the fragmentation in the new generation of extremists' goals and ideology, which move beyond the singular style and nationalist ideology of the 1980s/1990s neo-Nazis to include pan-Aryan, transnational, and international white supremacy movements as well as anti-capitalist, anti-foreigner and pro-national groups. In tracing the transformation, commercialization and commodification of right-wing extremist symbols and codes since 1945, I further argue that the increasing appeal of and participation in the extreme right-wing on the part of German youth today can partially be explained by the popularity of these new coded symbols. The book draws on a digital database of right-wing extremist images (both historical and contemporary) and will also include planned qualitative and ethnographic research with right-wing youth, police, school and legal authorities, and anti-fascist activists in Berlin and Brandenburg, Germany.

The second project, which I am conducting together with colleagues at the Social Science Research Council, is an examination of internationalization and interdisciplinarity in higher education in the U.S., Germany, and the U.K. Among other issues, I am interested in comparing the extent to which various nation-states promote the production of knowledge about international and regional issues in ways that safeguard their own national interests.

With nearly $1M in funding from the U.S. Department of Education, we collected data for the U.S. portion of the research from 2005-2008 with a focus on four overlapping regions of the world: the Middle East, South Asia, Eurasia/Russia, and Central Asia. The project had a sequential mixed-methods research design consisting of 17 qualitative site visits to 12 U.S. campuses, during which we conducted hundreds of interviews with university administrators and faculty as well as focus groups with students and faculty and many hundred hours of observation; statistical analysis of the U.S. Department of Education's national (EELIAS) database on area studies centers; national surveys of students and area studies centers; and document analysis of hundreds of area studies center proposals, reports, and other university documentation. I am currently working on two book manuscripts from this project: an edited volume (together with Seteney Shami) on Middle East Studies, and a book on the internationalization and the American university, together with Mitchell Stevens and Seteney Shami, currently titled Ambivalent Internationals: American Social Scientists and the Dream of a Global Modern.

The third project extends my work on the genetic and cultural understandings of collective belonging, which I studied in my first book (Blood and Culture: Youth, Right-Wing Extremism, and Belonging in Contemporary Germany , Duke University Press 2009), to the study of kinship and family reproduction. This historical project focuses on the pre-commercial era of fertility treatments in the U.S. and in particular on medical school programs. In addition to archival research in medical college and national associational archives, I am conducting oral histories with physicians, sperm donors, and families who conceived through fertility treatments in the pre-commerical era (approximately 1945-1980).

Photo Credit:  Milas Smith Photography