Stefan Sasse: As a follow-up to the question you got about your career path, you mentioned all those different historic areas you studied. In Germany, you usually don’t diversify that much, especially since the prevailing wisom is that you need to speak the language to the history (and who ever does?). So, how do you approach source texts and the like in the US?

Well, keep in mind I was talking about taking undergraduate-level courses; standards are different at the masters or PhD level, where there are language requirements. As someone studying the U.S, I had an easier job of it just having to prove proficiency in French (even though you don’t really need French to study 20th century U.S public policy); a medievalist, for example, would have to prove proficiency in French, medieval French, Latin and/or Greek, and paleography. 

But in general, for undergraduate and intro-level graduate courses, primary documents would be read in translation. For higher-level grad courses, you’d be expected to read in the language.