Teaching

I teach courses on twentieth-century Germany, as well as a variety of undergraduate options on Modern European social and cultural history, including a Special Subject entitled ‘The Cold War: Politics, Society and Culture."

As part of the MA programme in Modern European Cultural History, I teach courses on "The Making of Modern Europe" and "The History of Human Rights."

Editorial Board Memberships and Inter-University Activities:

Editorial Board, Past & Present, 2009-

Chair, German History Society UK, 2011-2013

Editorial Board, German History, 2010-

National Subpanelist for History, Research Excellence Framework (REF), 2011-2014.

Joint Editor, German History, 2004-09

SELECT PUBLICATIONS

Books:

Within Walls: Private Life in the German Democratic Republic (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2010), 321 pp.

*Awarded Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History (Senior Category) by the Wiener Library, London, October 2010

The Authority of Everyday Objects: A Cultural History of West German Industrial Design (Berkeley:UniversityofCalifornia Press, 2004; paperback, 2007), 348 pp.

*History Book Prize Finalist, German Studies Association (USA), 2006

Edited Books:

Co-Editor (with Christian Wiese), Years of Persecution, Years of Extermination: Saul Friedländer and the Future of Holocaust Studies (London: Continuum, 2010), 370 pp.

Co-Editor (with Alon Confino and Dirk Schumann), Between Mass Death and Individual Loss: The Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany (New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008; paperback, 2011), 329 pp.

Co-Editor (with Katherine Pence), Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics (Ann Arbor: University of MichiganPress, 2008), 378 pp.

Co-Editor (with Greg Eghigian), Pain and Prosperity: Reconsidering Twentieth Century German History (Palo Alto:StanfordUniversity Press, 2003), 279 pp.

Guest Edited Special Journal Issues:

Co-Editor (with David Crowley), “Domestic Dreamworlds: Notions of Home in Post-1945 Europe,” Journal of Contemporary History 40:2 (Spring, 2005), pp. 213-362.

Articles and Book Chapters

“Socialism, Social Rights, Human Rights,” Humanity, special issue edited by Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann et al (Spring 2012), forthcoming.

“Westalgie: West German Longing for the Cold War after 1989,” German Politics & Society, Autumn2012, forthcoming.

“Violence, Separateness and Performance: Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy Reconsidered,” Gewalt Denken. Lektüren – Festschrift für Bernd Weisbrod zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Habbo Knoch, Uffa Jensen and Miriam Rürup (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011), pp. 214-222.

“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, 2010), pp. 286-309.

“Manners, Morality and Civilization: Reflections on Post-1945 German Etiquette Books,” in Histories of the Aftermath: The Legacies of World War II in Comparative European Perspective, ed. Frank Biess and Robert Moeller (New York: Berghahn, 2010), pp. 196-214.

“’I Want My File!’ The Private Side of German Reunification,” History Today, Oct. 2009, pp. 34-39.

“Privatheit” [Privacy], in Erinnerungsorte der DDR, ed. Martin Sabrow (Munich: CH Beck, 2009), pp. 314-325.

“Private Property and Public Culture: A Forgotten Chapter of East European Communist Life,” in Centre d'histoire de Sciences Politiques, http://www.histoire-politique.fr, January 2009.

"Property, Peace and Honor: Neighborhood Justice in Communist Berlin,” Past & Present 201(November 2008), pp. 215-254.

“Nachbarschaft, Konflikte und Ehre: Alltagsjustiz in der DDR,” in Zeiträume: Potsdamer Almanach des Zentrums für Zeithistorische Forschung, 2007 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008), pp. 17-28.

“Death and 20^th Century Germany,” 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. 1-24.

“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. 151-178.

“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. 96-132.

“Germany, International Justice and the 20^th Century,” in History and Memory, Special Issue on “Histories and Memories of 20^th CenturyGermany,” ed. A. Confino 17:1/2 (Fall 2005), pp.45-86.

“Domestic Dreamworlds: Notions of Home in Post-1945 Europe,” Journal of Contemporary History 40:2 (April, 2005), pp. 213-236.

“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:CambridgeUniversityPress, 2003), pp. 291-321.

“Remembrance of Things Past: Nostalgia in West and East Germany, 1980-2000,” in Pain and Prosperity: Reconsidering 20^th Century German History, eds. P. Betts and G. Eghigian (Palo Alto:StanfordUniversityPress, 2003), pp. 179-207.

“The New Fascination with Fascism: The Case of Nazi Modernism,” Journal of Contemporary History 37:4 (September, 2002), pp. 541-558.

“The Nierentisch Nemesis: Organic Design as West German Pop Culture,” German History 19:2 (May, 2001), pp. 185-217.

"The Twilight of the Idols: East German Memory and Material Culture," Journal of Modern History 72:3 (September, 2000), pp. 731-765. ( *Higby Prize for Best Article in the JMH 1998-2000)

"The Bauhaus as Cold War Legend: West German Modernism Revisited," German Politics and Society 14:12 (Summer, 1996), pp. 75-100.