Cora Granata is Professor of History and Associate Director of the Center for Oral and Public History at California State University, Fullerton. The Center for Oral and Public History (COPH) is one of the oldest and largest oral history programs and archives in the United States, boasting more than 5,000 recorded interviews and related materials. COPH trains students in the research methods of collecting oral histories, interpreting these histories, and presenting important regional, national, and global stories to the public. A fluent German speaker and LA native, Dr. Granata has lived, studied, and conducted research in Berlin and other German cities many times over the course of her life. Her own first study abroad experience as an undergraduate at University of California, Berkeley was in Berlin. She interned at a bank in Berlin just six months after the fall of the infamous Berlin Wall. From 1992-93 Granata would live in Bonn, working as a legislative intern at the Bundestag through the Internationales Parlaments-Stipendium. She received her master’s degree at Georgetown University’s Center for German and European Studies (School of Foreign Service), before receiving her Ph.D. in modern German history. She spent a year living in Berlin conducting research for her dissertation as a Bundeskanzler Fellow. She has published award-winning research on the history of cultural minorities in communist East Germany. Recently, she spent summer 2014 in Berlin as an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow and visiting professor at the Friedrich-Meinecke Institute of the Freie Universität, and returned again to Berlin in summer 2015. During these recent stays, she developed and nurtured her personal and professional contacts with Berlin-based community organizations that engage with oral history. Dr. Cora Granata learned about the Lange Tafel through her work with the Zeigzeugenbörse (Berlin Historical Eyewitness Society) and came with her family to a Lange Tafel installation in the Bergmannstraße in the Berlin neighborhood of Kreuzberg on 5 July 2014. She was impressed by the way it brought a community together and fostered civic engagement through collective story telling.

Awards and Prizes:

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow

History Department Outstanding Faculty Member

CSUF Outstanding Teacher Scholar for Promotion of International Education

CSUF Outstanding Scholarly and Creative Activity Award

Best Article Prize, German Studies Association and German Academic Exchange Service