Presenter Jeremy Best The 19th-century unification of Germany transformed a fragmented collection of more than 30 independent states into a single, powerful nation-state. How it is that German-speaking immigrants could (and did ) come from places that are not in modern Germany?

Jeremy Best is an Associate Professor in the History Department of Iowa State University. He teaches courses in the history of Germany, modern Europe, and Western Civilization and also teach courses on the history of racism and racialized violence, including courses on the Holocaust and comparative genocide. Dr. Best has written a book on German Missionary Culture and is currently working on a new book about United States and Germany and their simultaneous creation of the German-American military, economic, and cultural alliance from 1945 to 1980. Dr. Best is also a Faculty member in Iowa State’s Game Design Program. This is a brand-new program at ISU that he helped launch. For the major, he teaches courses in game studies that focus on the narratological, world-building, and sociological elements of game design.