Helmut Walser Smith (born 10 December 1962, in

Freiburg, Germany Freiburg im Breisgau or simply Freiburg is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fourth-largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, Mannheim and Karlsruhe. Its built-up area has a population of abou ...

) was named in 2004 to the

Martha Rivers Ingram Martha Robinson Rivers Ingram (born August 20, 1935) is an American billionaire businesswoman and philanthropist. In 1995, Ingram succeeded her late husband as chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Ingram Industries, one of America's larg ...

chair as Professor of History at Vanderbilt University

His teaching and writing focus on modern

German history The concept of Germany as a distinct region in Central Europe can be traced to Julius Caesar, who referred to the unconquered area east of the Rhine as ''Germania'', thus distinguishing it from Gaul. The victory of the Cherusci, Germanic tribes ...

, especially the long nineteenth century. He has served on the editorial boards of ''

Central European History ''Central European History'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal on history published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Central European History Society, an affiliate of the American Historical Association. It covers all as ...

'' and the ''Journal of Modern History'' and in 2011–12 was past president of the Conference Group on Central European History of the

American Historical Association The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world, claiming over 10,000 members. Founded in 1884, AHA works to protect academic free ...

. From 2005 to 2008, he was Director of the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt and in 2014 received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

. Smith earned a B.A. at Cornell University in 1984, and received his PhD from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

in 1992, where his 1991 dissertation was on nationalism and religion in

Wilhelmine The Wilhelmine period or Wilhelmian era () comprises the period of German history between 1888 and 1918, embracing the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II in the German Empire from the death of Kaiser Friedrich III until the end of World War I and Wilh ...

Germany.

Monographs

* ''German Nationalism and Religious Conflict'' (Princeton, 1995) * ''The Butcher’s Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town'' (New York, 2002) * ''Protestants, Catholics and Jews in Germany, 1800-1914'', ed. (Oxford, 2002) * ''Exclusionary Violence: Antisemitic Riots in Modern German History'', co-ed. with Werner Bergmann and Christhard Hoffmann (Ann Arbor, 2002) * ''The Holocaust and other Genocides: History, Representation, Ethics'', ed. (Nashville, 2002) * ''The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race across the Long Nineteenth Century'' (New York, 2008) * ''The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History'', ed. (Oxford, 2011). * ''Germany. A Nation in Its Time. Before, During, and After Nationalism'' (New York, 2020)

Essays

* "The Vanishing Point of German History: An Essay on Perspective." History and Memory 17, no. 2 (Spring–Winter 2005): 267–295.

References

1. http://as.vanderbilt.edu/history/bio/helmut-smith 2. http://as.vanderbilt.edu/german/bio/helmut-smith-german {{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Helmut Walser Living people 1962 births Historians of Germany 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers Vanderbilt University faculty American male non-fiction writers