Program Mission
The Mosse Program supports and sustains an international scholarly community informed by multiple perspectives and cultural traditions exemplified by George L. Mosse. » Learn More
Program Announcements:
The ninth volume in the Collected Works of George L. Mosse is now available for purchase! Masses and Man: Nationalist and Fascist Perceptions of Reality
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Masses and Man comprises three parts. The first lays out a cultural history of nationalism, essentially the first of its kind, emphasizing the importance of sacred expressions like myths, symbols, and rituals as appropriated in a political context. The second zeroes in on fascism’s most dramatic irruptions in European history in the rise of Italian Fascism and the Nazi Party in Germany, elucidating these as not just political movements but also cultural and even aesthetic ones. The third part considers nationalism and fascism from the particular standpoint of German Jews.
The eighth volume in the Collected Works of George L. Mosse is now available for purchase! Confronting the Nation: Jewish and Western Nationalism
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Confronting the Nation brings together twelve of celebrated historian George L. Mosse’s most important essays to explore competing forms of European nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Mosse coins the term “civic religion” to describe how nationalism, especially in Germany and France, simultaneously inspired and disciplined the populace through the use of rituals and symbols. The definition of citizenship shaped by this nationalism, however, frequently excluded Jews, who were stereotyped as outsiders who sought to undermine the national community. With keen attention to liberal forms of nationalism, Mosse examines the clash of aspirational visions of an inclusive nation against cultural registers of nativist political ideologies.
The seventh volume in the Collected Works of George L. Mosse is now available: Germans and Jews: The Right, the Left, and the Search for a “Third Force” in Pre-Nazi Germany
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Originally published in 1970, Germans and Jews brings together George L. Mosse’s thoughts on a critical time in German history when thinkers on both the left and the right shared a common goal. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, intellectuals across the political spectrum aimed to solve the problems of contemporary society by creating a force that would eliminate both state Marxism and bourgeois society: a “third force” beyond communism and capitalism. This pervasive turn in ideology had profound effects on German history. In Mosse’s reading, left-wing political efforts became increasingly unrelated to reality, while the right finally discovered in fascism the force it had been seeking.
The sixth volume in the Collected Works of George L. Mosse is now available for preorder: The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich.
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The Nationalization of the Masses is George L. Mosse’s major statement about political symbols and the means of their diffusion. Focusing on Germany and, to a lesser degree, France and Italy, Mosse analyzes the role of symbols in fueling mass politics, mass movements, and nationalism in a way that is broadly applicable and as relevant today as it was almost fifty years ago. This new edition contains a critical introduction by Victoria de Grazia, Moore Collegiate Professor of History at Columbia University, contextualizing Mosse’s research and exploring its powerful influence on subsequent generations of historians.
The fifth volume in the Collected Works of George L. Mosse is now available for preorder:
The Culture of Western Europe:
The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.
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The Culture of Western Europe, George L. Mosse’s sweeping cultural history, was originally published in 1961 and revised and expanded in 1974 and 1988. Originating from the lectures at the University of Wisconsin—Madison for which Mosse would become famous, the book addresses, in crisp and accessible language, the key issues he saw as animating the movement of culture in Europe. This new edition restores the original 1961 illustrations and features a critical introduction by Anthony J. Steinhoff, professor in the department of history at the Université du Québec à Montréal, contextualizing Mosse’s project and arguing for its continued relevance today.
Recent Mosse Series titles:
Surreal Geographies recovers a forgotten archive of Holocaust representation. Examining art, literature, and film produced from the immediate postwar period up to the present moment, Kathryn L. Brackney investigates changing portrayals of Jewish victims and survivors. In so doing, she demonstrates that the Holocaust has been understood not only through the documentary realism and postmodern fragmentation familiar to scholars but also through a surreal mode of meaning making. From an otherworldly “Planet Auschwitz” to the spare, intimate spaces of documentary interviews, Brackney shows that the humanity of victims has been produced, undermined, and guaranteed through evolving scripts for acknowledging and mourning mass violence.
George L. Mosse (1918–99) was one of the most influential cultural and intellectual historians of modern Europe. In Contemporary Europe in the Historical Imagination, an international assembly of leading scholars explore Mosse’s enduring methodologies in German studies and modern European cultural history. Considering Mosse’s life and work historically and critically, the book begins with his intellectual biography and goes on to reread his writings in light of historical developments since his death, and to use, extend, and contend with Mosse’s legacy in new contexts he may not have addressed or even foreseen.
The volume wrestles with intertwined questions that continue to emerge from Mosse’s pioneering research, including: What role do sexual and racial stereotypes play in European political culture before and after 1945? How are gender and Nazi violence bound together? Importantly, the contributors pose questions that are inspired by Mosse’s work but that he did not directly examine.
Newest on the Mosse Blog:
- Read Sara Paris, “Teaching H223: Women, Spirituality, Law, and Medicine (1100-1500)”
- Read Jim Coons, “Here Are the People: The Scholarly Empathy of Laird Boswell, Suzanne Desan, and Mary Louise Roberts”
- Read Ludwig Decke, Conference Report: “Berlin Art Patrons and Their Country Houses as Places for the Private Display of Collections”
- Read Hilary Handin, review of Renée Poznanski, “Propaganda and Persecution The French Resistance and the ‘Jewish Question’”
- Read Abigail Lewis, “In Memoriam: Remembering Jen Gramer (1988-2023)”
- Read Will Kirsch, review of Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, ed. “Did it Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America”
- Read Collin Bernard, “Teaching European Urban History”
- Read Matthew Yokell, review of Piotr Puchalski, “Poland in a Colonial World Order: Adjustments and Aspirations, 1918–1939”
- Read Maxwell Greenberg, review of David Austin Walsh, “Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement and the Far Right”
- Read Giuliana Chamedes, review of Stefanos Geroulanos, “The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence and Our Obsession with Human Origins”
- Listen Eliana Chavkin, Lecture: “A Paradox of Memory: Memorial Union and UW-Madison’s War Dead”
- Read Maddy McDonald, “On Serving as the Undergraduate Intern in European and Digital History”
- Read Netta Green, review of Miranda Sachs, “An Age to Work: Working-Class Childhood in Third Republic Paris”
- Read Gregory Jones-Katz, review of Richard Wolin, “Heidegger in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Ideology”
- Read Edward Frame, review of of Samuel Moyn, “Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times”
- Read Ashley Barnes-Gilbert, review of Margot Canaday, “Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America”
New from the Mosseaner:
Read Arie Dubnov’s essay, “A Sentimental Stroll Down Ramban Straße” in the Tel Aviv Review of Books.
Watch Ethan Katz on PBS NewsHour segment “What Whoopi Goldberg’s Holocaust remarks can teach us about antisemitism.”
Listen to former Mosse Fellows Dan Hummel and David Harrisville discuss The Virtuous Wehrmacht: Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Eastern Front 1941-1944 on the UpWords Podcast.
Congratulations to Magda Teter for winning the 2021 American Historical Association George L. Mosse Prize for her book Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth (Harvard University Press, 2020).
Read Alin Constantin’s “Nazi Culture Revisited” on Anson Rabinbach’s Staging the Third Reich on the Journal of the History of Ideas Blog (5 May 2021).
Read Chad S.A. Gibbs’s Newsweek article “Advice About the End of the Pandemic, From a Combat Veteran” (16 February 2021).
Read Chad S.A. Gibbs’s Fortunoff Video Archive post, “What they Tell: Treblinka Survivor and Witness Voices in the Fortunoff Archive.”
Read Omri Shafer-Raviv’s The Forum for Regional Thinking article “המלחמה הדמוגרפית של ישראל בעזה” (16 February 2021).
Read the H-Diplo roundtable on Till van Rahden’s Demokratie: eine gefährdete Lebensform (New York: Campus, 2019)
Read Cindy Schweich Handler’s “We can hope history won’t repeat itself — but Fritz Oppenheimer’s experience is a warning,” in NorthJersey.
Read Torsten Fluh’s “Von der Fiktionalität der Epidemie” on Night Out@Berlin.
Congratulations Tamar Herzig on winning the Dorothy Rosenberg Prize for the history of the Jewish diaspora for her new book A Convert’s Tale: Art, Crime and Jewish Apostasy in Renaissance Italy (Harvard, 2019).
Congratulations David Warren Sabean for receiving the AHA Award for Scholarly Distinction.
Read Sara Brinegar’s Holocaust Forced Labor teaching resource at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Read Abigail Lewis’s H-Diplo review of Lara R. Curtis, Writing Resistance and the Question of Gender (17 September 2020).
Read Chad S.A. Gibbs’s opinion piece “China is Perpetuating Genocide: We’ve Seen This Before,” in Forward (22 July 2020).
Read Ethan Katz’s and Deborah Lipstadt’s opinion piece “Far more unites Black and Jewish Americans than divides them,” on CNN (18 July 2020).
Read John D. Wilsey’s Christianity Today review of Daniel G. Hummel’s book Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).
Read Walker Robins’s H-Net review of Daniel G. Hummel’s book Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).
Read Steven Aschheim’s review of David G. Marwell’s Mengele: Unmasking the Angel of Death (W.W. Norton, 2020).
Read Arie Dubnov’s Ha’aretz article about the life of George Steiner: “What if Mossad Agents Had Caught Hitler in the Amazon Rain Forest?”
Read Mosse Exchange Fellow Abby Lewis’ review of Sara Blair’s new book How the Other Half Looks: The Lower East Side and the Afterlives of Images (Princeton University Press, 2018).
Listen to Professor David Sorkin discuss his new book, Jewish Emancipation: A History Across Five Centuries (Princeton University Press, 2019).
Medaon put out an article by Dieter Langewiesche, “Bildungsliberalismus und deutsches Judentum. Historische Reflexionen auf den Spuren von George L. Mosse.”
Smithsonian Magazine published a long article on the Mosse Art Restitution project, “The Lost Maidens of Berlin.”
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