Geoffrey Howard eoffEley (born 4 May 1949) is a British-born

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

. He studied history at

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...

, and received his

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * '' Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. al ...

from the

University of Sussex , mottoeng = Be Still and Know , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £14.4 million (2020) , budget = £319.6 million (2019–20) , chancellor = Sanjeev Bhaskar , vice_chancellor = Sasha Roseneil , ...

in 1974. He has taught at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in the Department of History since 1979 and the Department of

German Studies German studies is the field of humanities that researches, documents and disseminates German language and literature in both its historic and present forms. Academic departments of German studies often include classes on German culture, Germa ...

since 1997. He now serves as the Karl Pohrt Distinguished University Professor of Contemporary History at

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and t ...

. Eley's early work focused on the radical

nationalism Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...

Imperial Germany The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...

and

fascism Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and t ...

, but has since grown to include theoretical and methodological reflections on

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians h ...

and the history of the political

left Left may refer to: Music * ''Left'' (Hope of the States album), 2006 * ''Left'' (Monkey House album), 2016 * "Left", a song by Nickelback from the album '' Curb'', 1996 Direction * Left (direction), the relative direction opposite of right * ...

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

. Eley is particularly well known for his early study, ''The Peculiarities of German History'' (first published in German as ''Mythen deutscher Geschichtsschreibung'' in 1984), co-authored with David Blackbourn (a fellow Briton, who now teaches at

Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...

), which challenged the orthodoxy in German social history known as the Sonderweg thesis. His most successful book is ''Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000'', which has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Serbian, Korean, Turkish and Greek. Recently, he published a collection of essays on

called ''Nazism as Fascism: Violence, Ideology, and the Ground of Consent in Germany, 1930-1945'' with Routledge Press.

Works

(This list does not include edited volumes.) * ''Nazism as Fascism: Violence, Ideology, and the Ground of Consent in Germany, 1930-1945''. London: Routledge, 2013 * ''After the Nazi Racial State: Difference and Democracy in Germany and Europe''. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009. * ''The Future of Class in History: What's Left of the Social?'' (with Keith Nield). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007. * ''A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society''. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. * ''Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000''. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. * ''Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck''. London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980; new ed. 1991. * ''Wilhelminismus, Nationalismus, Faschismus: Zur historischen Kontinuität in Deutschland''. Münster: Verlag Westfälisches Dampfboot, 1991. * Review article: "Labor History, Social History, ''Alltagsgeschichte'': Experience, Culture, and the Politics of the Everyday--a New Direction for German Social History?" ''The Journal of Modern History'' Vol. 61, No. 2, June 1989 * ''From Unification to Nazism: Reinterpreting the German Past''. London: Routledge, 1986. * ''The Peculiarities of German History'' (with David Blackbourn). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.

External links

Faculty page on Eley at the University of Michigan
* Geoff Eley
"No Need to Choose: History from Above, History from Below"
''Viewpoint Magazine'', June 2014. {{DEFAULTSORT:Eley, Geoff Alumni of the University of Sussex British Marxist historians University of Michigan faculty 1949 births Living people Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford