• Jason Johnson earned his Ph.D. in modern European history from Northwestern University with a focus on twentieth-century Germany. He spent a year in Berlin on a Fulbright Fellowship. His specializations include fascism, the Holocaust, World War II, the Cold War, and borders in Europe.

    His book Divided Village: The Cold War in the German Borderlands (2017) centers on the German community Mödlareuth divided by the Iron Curtain. He has published on numerous other aspects of Germany, including tourism to Cold War Berlin, citizens’ petitions to the East German government, cultural exchange programs between East Germany and the US, and East German historical memory.

    Johnson teaches a variety of courses at Trinity, such as ones on European history from the French Revolution through the present, the Holocaust, World War II, European borders, dictatorships, and the Cold War. Further, he is, for example, the university's adviser and coordinator for the student Fulbright Program. Moreover, he is president of Trinity's chapter of the national honor society Phi Beta Kappa. Johnson is also coordinator of the History Department’s student essay prize competition and co-founder and coordinator of the Trinity-UTSA-Texas A&M San Antonio History Research Workshop. He has also taught in Trinity’s McNair Program as a faculty tutorial fellow.

    In 2025, Johnson earned Trinity’s Award for Distinguished Advising and Mentoring. In 2019, he was awarded Trinity’s Early Career Faculty Award for Distinguished Teaching and Research.

    • Ph.D., Northwestern University
    • M.A., Northwestern University
    • B.A. University of Tennessee

    Recent

    • “There is no closing time’: Tourism to Cold War Berlin,” chapter in edited volume (eds. John Schuessler, Adam Seipp, Thomas Sullivan), The Berlin Airlift and the Making of the Cold War, College Station: Texas A&M University Press, October 2022.
    • "Struggles in 'the Stronghold of World Imperialism': East German "People's Friendship" as Nontraditional Diplomacy in the United States, 1961-1989," German Politics and Society, October 2019
    • Divided Village: The Cold War in the German Borderlands, New York: Routledge, 2017
    • "‘Wild and fearsome hours’: The First Year of the US Occupation in a Bavarian County, 1945-1946,” German Studies Review, 2018
    • Ruptures of the Everyday: Views of Modern Germany from the Ground, book by Alltagsgeschichte26 (Everyday History Research Team with 25 other scholars), New York: Berghahn Books, 2017
    • ‘An ugly piece of work’: Cold War Conflict on the German Frontline,” in Perspectives on Conflict, Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University, 2017

    • Modern Europe
    • European Frontiers
    • History of the Holocaust
    • World War II Era
    • Dictatorship and Division