| Post: | Reader in History |
| Location: | Arts B B351 |
| Email: | P.R.Betts@sussex.ac.uk |
| Telephone numbers | |
| Internal: | 7454 |
| UK: | (01273) 877454 |
| International: | +44 1273 877454 |
Biography
BA History, Haverford College (US), 1985; MA, University of Chicago, 1989; PhD, University of Chicago 1995. Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 1996-1999. University of Sussex, 2000-
Co-director of Sussex's Centre for Modern European Cultural History, as well as Director of the Sussex-China Faculty Exchange Programme since 2004.
Research
Joint Editor of the journal German History, 2004-
I was on leave 2006-07 as a recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts (USA) Full-Year Research Fellowship and was a Visiting Scholar at the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung, Potsdam, April-May 2007. In 2004-2005 I was Faculty Exchange Fellow at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Currently I am writing a book on the history of private life in East Germany, to be published by Oxford University Press in 2010.
Teaching
I teach courses on twentieth-century Germany, as well as a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate options on Modern European intellectual and cultural history, including a Special Subject entitled ‘The Cold War: Politics and Culture."
As part of the MA programme in Modern European Cultural History, I teach courses on "Nation, State and Empire in the Modern World," "Historiographical Debates on Modern Germany," and "20th Century European Intellectual History."
Publications
2009
Years of Persecution, Years of Extermination: Saul Friedländer and the Future of Holocaust Studies, co-edited with Christian Wiese (London: Continuum, 2009), forthcoming.
"Manners, Morality and Civilization: Reflections on Post-1945 German Etiquette Books: Reflections on Post-1945 German Etiquette Book," in Histories of the Aftermath: The Legacies of World War II in Comparative European Perspective, ed. Frank Biess and Robert Moeller (New York: Berghahn, 2009).
"Privatheit" [Privacy], in Gedächtnisorte der DDR, ed. Martin Sabrow (Munich: CH Beck, 2009).
"Die Politik des Privaten: Eingaben in der DDR [The Politics of the Private: Citizen Complaints in the GDR]," Demokratie im Schatten der Gewalt: Geschichten des Privaten im deutschen Nachkrieg, ed. Daniel Fulda, Dagmar Herzog, Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann and Till van Rahden (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2009).
2008
"Property, Peace and Honor: Neighborhood Justice in Communist Berlin," Past & Present, 201 (November 2008), pp. 215-254.
Between Mass Death and Individual Loss: The Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany, edited with Alon Confino and Dirk Schumann (New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2008).
Socialist Modern: New Perspectives on East German Everyday Culture, edited with Katherine Pence (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008).
"When Cold Warriors Die: The State Funerals of Konrad Adenauer and Walter Ulbricht," in Between Mass Death and Individual Loss: The Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany, ed. Alon Confino, Paul Betts and Dirk Schumann (New York/ Providence: Berghahn, 2008), pp. 151-176.
"Building Socialism at Home: The Case of East German Interiors," in Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics, ed. Katherine Pence and Paul Betts (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), pp. 1-34.
2007
"The Rise and Fall of the American ‘Soft' Empire," History Workshop Journal 63 (Spring 2007), pp. 335-342.
2006
"Some Reflections on the Visual Turn," Roundtable Participant, H-German Forum on "The Visual Turn in History," September 2006.
2005
"Germany, International Justice and the 20th Century," in History and Memory, Fall 2005
Co-Editor, Special Issue of Journal of Contemporary History on "Domestic Dreamworlds: Notions of Home in Post-1945 Europe," April 2005.
Organizer, Conference on ‘The Prospect of Privacy: Rethinking 20th Century Modernism in Europe and Asia,' Victoria & Albert Museum, London, June 2005
2004
The Authority of Everyday Objects: A Cultural History of West German Industrial Design (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004, [paperback 2007)
2003
Pain and Prosperity: Reconsidering Twentieth Century German History, edited with Greg Eghigian (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2003)
"Remembrance of Things Past: Nostalgia in West and East Germany, 1980-2000," in Pain and Prosperity: Reconsidering 20th Century German History, ed. P. Betts and G. Eghigian (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 179-207.
"Ästhetik und Öffentlichkeit: Westdeutschland in den 50er Jahren," [Aesthetics and the Public Sphere: West Germany in the 1950s] in Bernd Weisbrod (ed.), Die Politik der Öffentlichkeit- Die Öffentlichkeit der Politik: Politische Medialisierung in der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003), pp. 231-260.
"The Politics of Post-Fascist Aesthetics: West and East German Design in the 1950s," in Life After Death: Violence, Normality and the Reconstruction of Postwar Europe eds. Richard Bessel and Dirk Schumann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 291-321.
2002
"The New Fascination with Fascism: The Case of Nazi Modernism," Journal of Contemporary History 37:4 (September, 2002), pp. 541-558.
2001
"The Nierentisch Nemesis: Organic Design as West German Pop Culture," German History 19:2 (May, 2001), pp. 185-217.
2000
"The Twilight of the Idols: East German Memory and Material Culture," Journal of Modern History72:3 (September, 2000), pp. 731-765.
*Higby Prize for Best Article in the JMH 1998-2000.