Philip Decker

Position
Graduate Student
Bio/Description

Philip Decker is a fifth-year PhD candidate working on European political and cultural history in the twentieth century, with a focus on Germany and its external relationships. His dissertation, “The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: A Cultural History, 1939-1941,” explores cultural ties between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union before and after their rapprochement of August 23, 1939. Research areas include cinema, opera and concert music, tourism, radio broadcasting, and dramatic theater, as well as cultural bureaucracies and their censorship regimes. The dissertation also pays close attention to the ideological temperaments of Hitler, Goebbels, Ribbentrop and other Nazi elites, and provides new insight into the failed efforts of German diplomats to prevent the invasion of the USSR. 

At Princeton, Philip is a Centennial Fellow.  He passed his general examinations with distinction; his committee consisted of Yair Mintzker (modern German history), Stephen Kotkin (Soviet history), and David Bell (history and theory of revolutions).  Philip has taught as a preceptor for courses on modern Europe, Western warfare, and twentieth-century Japan. 

Philip has published five peer-reviewed journal articles, most recently in The English Historical Review. He has made over 40 conference presentations at venues including the AHA, German Studies Association, German History Society, ASEEES, and the Association for the Study of Nationalities.  In 2024-2025, Philip will serve as a graduate affiliate with Princeton’s European Cultural Studies program.

Philip earned a B.A. in History from Swarthmore College and an MPhil in International Relations from Lincoln College, University of Oxford, where he wrote his thesis on the fate of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty after 1991. Philip’s additional research interests include East German culture, British and Russian émigré fascism, Germany’s encounter with indigenous peoples of Africa and North America, and the impact of Kremlin-funded news outlets on contemporary German politics.

Philip’s scholarly work has been supported by grants from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), University of Oxford, Central European History Society, Phi Beta Kappa, German History Society, Princeton Judaic Studies, and Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS).  He is the recipient of the Hugdahl Memorial Award from New German Critique and the Susan Landau-Chark Award from the Canadian Society for Jewish Studies.

Selected Publications

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Decker, Philip. "Tudor Ghosts in Black Shirts: The British Union of Fascists, Nazi Germany and the Quest for Musical Greatness in Britain." The English Historical Review (2024).

Decker, Philip. “Wagner in Moscow, Glinka in Berlin: An Exchange of Operas during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Years.” German Studies Review 45, no. 3 (October 2022): 429–453.

Decker, Philip. “Screening White Reassurance: Insecurity and Redemption in Four German Africa Films.” Oxford German Studies 51, no. 2 (2022): 161–185.

Decker, Philip. “The ‘other America’ and its performers: pathways to socialism in the DEFA Indianerfilme.” Studies in Eastern European Cinema 12, no. 3 (2021): 197–215.

Decker, Philip. “‘We Show What Is Concealed’: Russian Soft Power in Germany.” Problems of Post-Communism 68, no. 3 (2021): 216–230.

Book Review

Decker, Philip. Review of Cultural Imperialism and the Decline of the Liberal Order: Russian and Western Soft Power in Eastern Europe. By G. Doug Davis and Michael O. Slobodchikoff. Lanham, MD, Lexington Books, 2018. Nationalities Papers 49, no. 3 (2021): 594–96.

Public Interest

Decker, Philip. “Immigrants Are Big Fans of Germany’s Anti-Immigrant Party.” Foreign Policy, January 15, 2020.

Year of Study
Fifth Year
Adviser
Area of Interest
Art History
Colonialism & Postcolonialism
Communism
Cultural History
Fascism
Film Studies
Foreign Relations
History of World War II
Indigenous History
Media
Native American
Visual Culture
War & Society
Home Department & Other Affiliations
History
Period
20th Century
Region
Europe
Russia and Eurasia