Michael Geyer
Samuel N. Harper Professor of German and European History
Dr. Phil. Albert Ludwigs Universität Freiburg
The University of Chicago
1126 E. 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Office: (773) 702-7939
Fax: (773) 702-7550
Email: mgeyer@uchicago.edu
On Leave in 2007-2008
FIELD SPECIALTIES
Modern German and European History; Globalization & World History; Human Rights; European War & Genocide
BIOGRAPHY
My main field of study is twentieth-century German and European history. I have written on a wide range of topics such as German armaments, resistance against the Third Reich, politics of memory, intellectuals in contemporary Germany, the work of Hannah Arendt, religion and belief, and most recently love and friendship. Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories, co-written with Konrad Jarausch, brought together some of these concerns in a reflection on the nature of modern German history and drew attention to new directions in German history and historiography.
War, civil war, and genocide in modern German and European history have been the focus of my research interests throughout my academic life. Currently, I am working on a study of German defeat and its aftermath in World War I and World War II. This project explores the social experience and catastrophic imagination of extreme violence during the late phases of both wars.
My colleague Charles Bright (University of Michigan) and I have taught courses on “The Twentieth Century World” long before the field world history became fashionable. We have jointly written a number of essays that develop the outlines of a history and theory of globalization and globality. Currently, we are completing a book-length study on The Global Condition in the Long Twentieth Century.
My interest in the history and theory of human rights from early modern Europe to the contemporary world emerges from an enduring interest in war and peace and the constitution of civil society. I am a co-founder of the Human Rights Program at the University of Chicago. My scholarly work focuses on the history of humanitarian (or NGO) movements and on an inquiry into the question why, at certain times, human rights matter, while at others they do not.
Graduate and undergraduate students who have worked with me have engaged in an even wider range of studies in German, European, as well as inter- and transnational history. I prefer to work with students who, after a period of disciplined training, strike out on their own and present their projects and findings to a diverse community of peers and faculty. My graduate and undergraduate teaching over the next few years will emphasize the comparative, European, and transnational dimensions of national histories and explore the question of what constitutes Europe. A new general education (Core) course on “Globalization & World History” will introduce the quickly growing field of world history, and the need for an informed introduction into the history and theory of human rights has rather increased than decreased over the past years.
PUBLICATIONS
(Ed. with Hartmut Lehmann) Religion und Nation - Nation und Religion: Beiträge zu einer unbewältigten Geschichte (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004).
(Ed.) War and Terror in Contemporary and Historical Perspective (Washington, D.C.: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies; The Johns Hopkins University, 2003)
(With Konrad Jarausch), A Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories (Princeton University Press, 2002)
(With Charles Bright) "Where in the World is America? The History of the United States in the Global Age," in Thomas Bender, ed., Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002), 63-99
"Insurrectionary Warfare: The German Debate about a Levée en Masse in October 1918," Journal of Modern History 73 (September 2001):459-527
(Ed.) The Power of Intellectuals in Contemporary Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
"America in Germany: Power and the Pursuit of Americanization," in Frank Trommler and Elliot Shore, eds., The German-American Encounter: Conflict and Cooperation between Two Cultures, 1800-2000 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2001), 121-44.
"Cold War Angst: The Case of West-German Opposition to Rearmament and Nuclear Weapons," in Hanna Schissler, ed., Miracle Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 376-408
"Germany, or, The Twentieth Century as History," South Atlantic Quarterly 96.4 (1997), 663-702.
(With Charles Bright) "World History in a Global Age," in American Historical Review 100 (October 1995), 1034-1060.
"German Strategy in the Age of Machine Warfare, 1914-1945," in Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 527-597.
Deutsche Rüstungspolitik, 1860-1980 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1984).