Heather L. Gumbert

Heather Gumbert is an associate professor of history at Virginia Tech. She is currently working on a book, tentatively titled Watching the Wall, which explores the complex and contradictory role of the Wall in the Cold War. In particular, the circulation of (a finite set of) images of and at the Wall contributed to a useful set of narratives that circumscribed engagement with state socialism in Germany and, more broadly, Eastern Europe, both during and in the aftermath of the Cold War. She continues to explore the transnational importance of television in the 20th century world in a more focused work on the emergence and growth of industrial television centers in cities that became significant nodes in postwar networks of circulation and exchange.