Fanny Isensee

Fanny Isensee is an historian of education working on US-American and German history. Her research is informed by material culture studies, Science and Technology Studies (especially Actor-Network Theory and Infrastructure Studies), history of knowledge, and the concept of small forms. 
She is a member of the research group Everyday Affordances of Nationalism in the Centre of Excellence in Nationalism Research in the Humanities (NARS), financed by the Research Council of Finland (2026-2033). Her research project "Feeding the Nation: School Meals and Everyday Nationalism in Germany and the United States, ca. 1890–1960" explores the school meal as a political act. School feeding brings together ideas of welfare, care and sustenance, and is also a site of everyday nationalism. The belief that there is a 'correct' or 'nationally appropriate' way to nourish children raises several questions: Who decides what this nourishment is? Which institutions, scientific authorities and administrative networks spread it? And what does it afford to the children who encounter it every day, or to those who are left out? The project traces how actors such as philanthropists, physicians, administrators, nutritionists, kitchens, and lunchrooms were assembled into networks that placed schoolchildren in direct, daily, bodily contact with the state. It examines how nutritional science worked as a nationalist form of knowledge, inscribed into small forms such as menus, nutrition charts, and guidelines that standardized what children ate. It also explores how these affordances of national belonging differed for children of different class, race and ethnicity, religion and gender, and how they shifted with historical ruptures and political transformations. 

Monograph

The Graded School: Reassembling Public School Organization in New York City, 1805-1921. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025.

Edited Volumes

Interweaving Peripheries: Transient Objectives and Morphing Spaces of School and Schooling. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2026. Together with Lisa Rosén Rasmussen and Josefine Wähler. 

The History of Education as History of Knowledge: Exploring Methods and Sources. New York: Routledge, 2026. Together with Joel Barnes, Jona T. Garz, Joakim Landahl, Björn Lundberg and Daniel Töpper.

B wie Bildung: 66 bedeutsame Begriffe. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, 2025. Together with Irene Leser.

Transatlantic Encounters in History of Education: Translations and Trajectories from a German-American Perspective. New York: Routledge, 2020. Together with Andreas Oberdorf and Daniel Töpper.

Peer-reviewed Articles 

Order in motion: The endeavour to create (self-)regulated pupil bodies through traffic safety education in Germany and the USA, 1970s–1990s, Nordic Journal of Educational History, in press.

Battle for Meaning: A Litmus Test for Actor-Network Theory in History of Education, Historia y Memoria de la Educación, in press. Co-authored with Daniel Deplazes.

Classifying Difference – Italian Immigrant Pupils in US City School Systems, 1880s to 1920s, Rivista di Storia dell’Educazione 13, no. 1 (2026): 43–53.

‘I’d hate to be driving a bus right now’ – The Irony of the (Un-)Failing School Bus Driver, Annali di storia dell'educazione e delle istituzioni scolastiche 32 (2025): 109–121.

Subjectivation Through Structural Coupling – The Emergence of School Laggards and Deficient Pupils, Historia Scholastica 10, no. 1 (2024): 123–155. Co-authored with Daniel Töpper.

Literalität, politische Exklusion, Schulexpansion. Eine Forschungshypothese über die Auswirkungen der literalitätbasierten Regulierung des Wahlrechts in den Americas im langen 19. Jahrhundert, Jahrbuch für Historische Bildungsforschung 28 (2023): 157–181. Co-authored with Marcelo Caruso.

Knowledge in the Making: Methodological Considerations on the Production, Dissemination, and Usage of ‘Small Forms in Education,’ Nordic Journal of Educational History 9, no.2 (2022): 39–62. Co-authored with Jona T. Garz and Daniel Töpper.

Institutionalisierung von Entwicklungsnormen im Elementarschulwesen – Schülerentwicklung und Jahrgangsgruppierung in Preußen und den USA im 19. Jahrhundert, Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 67, no. 2, 166–185. Co-authored with Daniel Töpper.

From «School Buildings» to «School Architecture» – School Technicians, Grand School Buildings and Educational Architecture in Prussia and the USA in the Nineteenth Century, Historia y Memoria de la Educación 13 (2021): 375–423. Co-authored with Daniel Töpper.

Book Chapters

Regulating the Circumstantial. Designated School Routes in the Federal Republic of Germany (1970s–1990s). In: Isensee, F., Rasmussen, L. R., Wähler, J. (eds.). Interweaving Peripheries: Transient Objectives and Morphing Spaces of School and Schooling (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2026), 195–220.

Das Klassenzimmer als Assemblage: Die Institutionalisierung der Jahrgangsklasse in New York Citys Public Schools (1805-1921). In: Rieger-Ladich, M., Rohstock, A., Schildermans, H., Wortmann, K. (eds.) Bruno Latour: Pädagogische Lektüren (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2026), 311–335.

Pastor und Mutter: Pastorale Sorge und Rollenerwartungen an Elementarschullehrerinnen im transatlantischen Vergleich im 19. Jahrhundert. In: Dietrich, C., Uhlendorf, N., Windheuser, J. (eds.) Sorge – Bildung – Erziehung (Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2024), 207-219. Co-authored with Daniel Töpper and Marcelo Caruso.

Gruppen- und Individualführung in der Schule. Die pastorale Verfasstheit der Schulklasse zwischen Verwaltung und Pädagogik. In: Rabenstein, K., Wicke, L. (eds.) Die Schulklasse – Kein Gegenstand qualitativer Forschung? (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, 2024), 25–42. Co-authored with Daniel Töpper and Marcelo Caruso.

Ein (Schul-)Haus für alle? – Zur Rezeption der Architektur der Franckeschen Stiftungen im US-amerikanischen und deutschsprachigen pädagogischen Diskurs der Sattelzeit (1750-1850). In: Grunewald, Th. (ed.) Frühneuzeitliche Schularchitekturen. Internationale und interdisziplinäre Perspektiven (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz Verlag, 2024), 249–272. Co-authored with Daniel Töpper.

Von der charismatisch-ambulierenden zur technisch-seminaristischen Fachlichkeit – das Beispiel des Lese- und Schreibverständnisses um 1800. In: Wähler, J., Lorenz, M., Reh, S., Scholz, J. (eds.) Fachunterrichtsgeschichten – Studien zur Geschichte der Praxis des Fachunterrichts (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, 2024), 165–181. Co-authored with Daniel Töpper.

Zur Verwobenheit von Fachwissen und Pathologien – Die (Nicht-) Thematisierung von Lese- und Schreibversagen in pädagogischen Handbüchern und psychologischer Forschung. In: Mayer, R., Golle, J., Parade, R. & Wittig, S. (eds.) Schule und Pathologisierung (Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, 2023), 90–108. Co-authored with Daniel Töpper.

“Recommended for Ungraded Class” – The Construction of Normalcy in Expert Reports in 1920s New York City. In: Moser, V. & Garz, J. (eds.) Das A(b)normale in der Pädagogik. Wissenspraktiken – Wissensordnungen – Wissensregime (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, 2022), 171–182.

“Intelligence Tests were given in order to obtain a basis for classifying the pupils” – Die Reclassification Projects in New York City in den 1920er Jahren. In: Reh, S., Bühler, P., Hofmann, M. & Moser, V. (eds.) Schülerauslese, schulische Beurteilung und Schülertests 1880-1980 (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, 2021), 225–240.