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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 eighth volume in the Collected Works of George L. Mosse is now available for preorder! 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.
Newest Mosse Series titles:
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.
Redeeming Objects traces the afterlives of things. Out of the rubble of World War II and the Holocaust, the Federal Republic of Germany emerged, and with it a foundational myth of the “economic miracle.” In this narrative, a new mass consumer society based on the production, export, and consumption of goods would redeem West Germany from its Nazi past and drive its rebirth as a truly modern nation. Turning this narrative on its head, Natalie Scholz shows that West Germany’s consumerist ideology took shape through the reinvention of commodities previously tied to Nazism into symbols of Germany’s modernity, economic supremacy, and international prestige.
Postwar advertising, film, and print culture sought to divest mass-produced goods—such as the Volkswagen and modern interiors—of their fascist legacies. But Scholz demonstrates that postwar representations were saturated with unacknowledged references to the Nazi past and older German colonial fantasies. Drawing on a vast array of popular and highbrow publications and films, Redeeming Objects adds a new perspective to debates about postwar reconstruction, memory, and consumerism.
Newest on the Mosse Blog:
- Read Jay Geller, review of Darcy Buerkle’s and Skye Doney’s “Contemporary Europe in the Historical Imagination”
- Read Gabriel Chazan, review of Rotem Rozental’s “Pre-State Photographic Archives and the Zionist Movement”
- Listen to Norman Domeier’s lecture “World Domination and Genocide: The ‘Lochner Version’ of Hitler’s Speech on 22 August 1939, a Key Document of National Socialist Ideology”
- Read Adam R. Seipp, review of Mikkel Dack’s “Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany: The Fragebogen and Political Screening during the Allied Occupation”
- Read Caroline Kita, review of Kerry Wallach’s and Aya Elyada’s “German-Jewish Studies: Next Generations”
- Read Joshua Shelly, review of Marc Volovici’s “German as a Jewish Problem: The Language Politics of Jewish Nationalism”
- Read Daniel G. Hummel, review of Anne Perez’s “Understanding Zionism: History and Perspectives”
- Listen to Steven E. Aschheim’s inaugural Mosse Lecture at Columbia University, “George L. Mosse: Historian of Fascism, Masculinity, and Nationalism”
- Read Stanley Payne, review of Emilio Gentile’s “Storia del fascismo” and “Totalitarismo 100”
- Read Emma Kuby, review of Elissa Mailänder’s “Amour, mariage, sexualité. Une histoire intime du nazisme (1930-1950)”
- Read Sean Andrew Wempe, review of Matthew Unangst’s “Colonial Geography: Race and Space in German East Africa, 1884-1905”
- Read Christopher A. Molnar, review of Lauren Stokes’s “Fear of the Family: Guest Workers and Family Migration in the Federal Republic of Germany”
- Read Christopher Hommerding, review of Stephen Vider’s “The Queerness of Home: Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Domesticity after World War II”
- Read Susanna Cassisa, review of W. Jake Newsome’s “Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming Out in the Shadow of the Holocaust”
- Read Haley E. R. Cooper, “Playing with the Past: The Ghost of Houdini Lives in a Texas Escape Room”
- Read Mosse Undergraduate Intern Maddy McGlone, “Archiving the Everyday and the Historian’s Craft”
- Read Rebecca Carter-Chand, review of Monique Scheer’s Enthusiasm: Emotional Practices of Conviction in Modern Germany
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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