Gabrielle Robinson
Born in Berlin, Gabrielle grew up in Germany and Austria. After a PhD from the University of London, she taught Literature and Drama at US universities and abroad. She is now Professor Emerita, at home in South Bend, Indiana. Gabrielle has published eight books and dozens of articles on history, literature, and popular culture. Gabrielle tells stories about people that reveal their personal situation within its historical context. One reason for her fascination with the intersection of the personal and historical stems from her own experience. Born in Berlin in 1942, her father’s fighter plane was shot down in 1943. After her family was bombed out twice, they fled Berlin in 1945 and became refugees in a North German village. This was the beginning of a string of migrations, from a village in Northern Germany to an Ursuline boarding school in Vienna, another on the Baltic Sea, then several years in Darmstadt where she earned a Baccalaurate. In 1962 she moved to Urbana, Illinois with her mother and stepfather. After a 1964 BA, she won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and got an MA at Columbia University in 1965. She then she moved to London with her Scottish husband and earned a PhD from the University of London in 1968. Gabrielle taught at the University of Illinois, where her only son was born, at Indiana University South Bend, and abroad. Gabrielle now is settled in South Bend, Indiana with her husband Mike, a sociologist turned sustainable neighborhood developer
