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Claudia Roesch (Picture: private)Claudia Roesch is a historian of 20th century American history, specializing in the history of family. Her fields of interest include the history of transatlantic exchanges, Gender and Migration Studies.Trained as both a historian and Americanist, she has written her PhD dissertation on Mexican immigrant families and social work programs in the United States at the University of Münster. After that she held a postdoctoral research position within the Collaborative Research Center 1150 „Cultures of Decision-Making“ at the University of Münster to research reproductive decision-making in Germany and the USA. Since January 2018, she is a research fellow at the GHI Washington working on a project on a transnational history of family planning.How do you explain your current research projects to your students?I work on atransnational history of family planning in Germany and the United States. Thismeans that I look at interconnections between the German family planningassociation Pro Familia and the US American Planned Parenthood Federation. I examinehow they exchanged ideas and information about the concept of family planning,about contraceptives and abortion reform. I trace how the American PlannedParenthood Federation helped establish the idea that family is something toplan for in postwar West Germany and supported founding a German familyplanning association. German family planners then very closely followed theintroduction of the pill in Puerto Rico and the US. By tracing theseconnections, I want to establish the history of family planning and birthcontrol clinics as a transnational history. It was not independent nationalinitiatives but a constant exchange of ideas that introduced new concepts offamily and new forms of family structure in the second half of the twentiethcentury.What were academic or personal inspirations that led to your current research?During my research formy PhD dissertation on Mexican immigrant families, I came across a quote from asociologist from the 1950s, who basically said that Americans planned theirfamilies, while Mexicans believed that children were a gift by God. So, Istarted asking myself when the idea that family is something to plan for emerged.When my PhD advisor, Isabel Heinemann, told me that colleagues in Münster werecollecting ideas for a collaborative research centre on “Cultures ofDecision-Making”, I remembered that quote and suggested researching how havingchildren became an act of decision-making in the 20th century. ThenI decided to focus on family planning associations since they promoted theconcept of family as an act of planning and debated who should decide aboutcontraceptives or abortions. As their campaigns served as advertisement for theproduct of family planning, they needed to refer to social norms and instancesof social change. Looking at their campaigns in a long-term perspective thushelps trace instances of social change, for instances when it was made clearthat women should choose by themselves which contraceptive fits best.How are you ‘doing’ research? What are your most important research methods (interviews, archives, excavations…)?I use archivalmaterial. I went through the collection of Planned Parenthood at Smith College inNorthampton, Massachusetts, and the Pro Familia archives in Frankfurt. I alsolooked at the papers of Pro Familia co-founder Hans Harmsen at the federalarchive in Koblenz, and those of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sangerhere at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. Mainly I refer tocorrespondences between different activists, but I found comics on familyplanning to be a really great source material. For instance, they show in verysimple drawings how a nicely planned small family will have a nice house, niceclothes and toys, whereas an unplanned large family will be poor and will haveno food on their plates. One of those comics was drafted by Planned Parenthood,originally to reach out to Spanish-speaking immigrants in the US, and then gotshipped to the family planning association in Colombia. One of the German ProFamilia activists found it there when he visited a birth control clinic inBogotá as part of a research trip and brought it back to use it in Germany –those are the exciting archive finds that help you trace global connections offamily planning.Which publications or academic events (workshops, conferences, lecture series…) did inspire you recently?A couple of weeks agoI was at the GSA (German Studies Association) annualconference inPittsburgh and that was really inspiring. There were so many young scholars –PhD students and young postdocs – who presented really exciting projects on acultural history of Germany, for instance on migration or on the history ofsexuality in postwar Germany. There was one panel that looked at the BerlinWall in a transnational perspective, how refugees from countries likeAfghanistan in the 1980s tried to cross that border. Lots of projects thatplaced German history into a Global History or transnational perspective, thatlooked at return migration to Turkey in the 1980s or at how dog breedingassociations had to reposition themselves after 1945. So, there is lots ofexciting PhD and postdoc projects coming out in the next couple of years,that’s really fascinating to see.Do you think that academic mobility changes the way in which research projects are conceptualized? What are your personal experiences in this regard?I think it helps youto broaden your perspective, since it is much easier to get in touch withpeople that come from different academic traditions. Especially when you workon projects that address questions of migration history, your own experience ofliving abroad helps you shape your project and connect your own experience withresearch questions. Of course, on a practical side, it is easier to see whichsource material is available at the place where you are located. But mostimportantly, it’s the exchange with people who know the scientific landscape inthe US, with senior scholars over here and with people who come to ourconferences and lectures that helps me the most. At the GHI, we can attractpeople from many different places in the US to come to our institute, to learnabout their interesting projects and to present our research. That is a veryexciting opportunity.Citation: "I Want to Establish the History of Family Planning and Birth Control Clinics as a Transnational History" - 5in10 with Claudia Roesch, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 19.11.18, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/15101.