MISC Lunch and Learn Lecture: "Writing the History of the Left" - Geoff Eley
Geoff Eley is the Karl Pohrt Distinguished University Professor of Contemporary History. He has published widely in German history of the 19th and 20th centuries, including his first book, 鈥淩eshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck鈥 (1980, new edn. 1991) and a general reinterpretation of German history jointly authored with David Blackbourn called 鈥淭he Peculiarities of German History鈥 (German edn. 1980, English 1984). His essays in the German field range widely from the later 19th century down to the present. He is currently finishing another book on liberalism, popular politics, and the creation of the German national state between the 1860s and the 1890s. On a broader front, he is preparing a volume called 鈥淕enealogies of Nazism: Conservatives, Radical Nationalists, Fascists in Germany, 1860-1945鈥. His edited volumes include 鈥淪ociety, Culture, and the State in Germany 1870-1930鈥 (1996), 鈥淭he 鈥楪oldhagen Effect鈥欌 (1997), and (with Jan Palmowski) 鈥淐itizenship and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Germany鈥 (2007). With Ron Suny he edited a Reader on Nationalism called 鈥淏ecoming National鈥 (1996) and with Nicholas Dirks and Sherry Ortner a Reader on Social Theory called 鈥淐ulture/Power/History鈥 (1993). His general history of the Left in Europe, 鈥淔orging Democracy鈥, appeared in 2002, and a study of the shifting popularity of social history and cultural history during the past four decades, 鈥淎 Crooked Line鈥, was published in 2005. A jointly authored book with Keith Nield, 鈥淭he Future of Class in History: What鈥檚 Left of the Social? , appeared in February 2007. His longer-term project is a book on the contested images of the national past in British and German cinema between the 1960s and the present. In addition to German history, his teaching interests include Europe since 1945, nationalism, cultural studies, and historiography. He joined the History Department at Michigan in 1979. During 2004-07 he chaired the Department of German, Dutch, and Scandinavian Studies, and in Fall 2002 acted as Director of the Program in Film and Video Studies (now Department of Screen Arts and Cultures). For many years he directed CSST, the Program on the Comparative Studies of Social Transformations. He previously taught at the University of Cambridge and was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and the University of Sussex.