-
Thomas Kühne is Professor of History and the Strassler Chair in the Study of Holocaust History and the Director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Currently he serves also as Director of Holocaust and Genocide Graduate Studies. Affiliated with Women’s Studies Program and Race and Ethnic Relations Program at Clark, he teaches Modern European and German History, with a focus on the Holocaust and Nazi Germany. His research explores the relation of war, genocide, and society, long-term traditions of political culture and political emotions in Europe, and the problem of locating the Holocaust and Nazi Germany in the continuities and discontinuities of the 20th century.
Thomas Kühne earned his Ph.D. from the University of Tübingen in 1992 and taught at the Universities of Konstanz, Tübingen and Weingarten in Germany thereafter. His initial scholarly work focused on cultural patterns of political conflicts and consensus strategies in 19th and 20th century Germany. His dissertation on electoral politics in Imperial Germany (published 1994) won the German Bundestag Research Prize. Since then, Kühne has been especially interested in synthesizing new approaches to the history of mass violence. His essay collection on the history of masculinities in modern Germany, Männergeschichte-Geschlechtergeschichte (Men’s History—Gender History, 1996) established this field in Central Europe and stimulated a broad range of innovative gender studies. From 1998 to 2001 he served as chair of the German Historical Peace Research Association and engaged in the new cultural military history (Was ist Militärgeschichte, What is Military History, 2000, co-edited with Bejamin Ziemann). Awarded major grants from the German Research Foundation, he completed his habilitation thesis at the University of Bielefeld in 2003. Accepting an invitation from the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, he came to the United States in 2003. He has been at Clark since 2004. In 2010, he was awarded a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and spent another year as fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Kühne’s recent studies explore the emotional and moral frameworks of collective violence. His 2006 book Kameradschaft suggests that the myth of comradeship, born in the First World War, shaped the experiences and actions of German WWII soldiers as well as war memory after 1945. Comradeship combined male bonding through criminal means with in-group “humanity.” It established a moral reference system that abandoned the idea of individual responsibility and enabled soldiers to support and to carry out the Holocaust. Scrutinizing the entire Nazi society, Kühne’s new book Belonging and Genocide. Hitler’s Community, 1918-1945 (Yale University Press 2010) explores how the Germans switched to community-based violent ethics even before the Nazis came to power, and how the Nazis used the human desire for community to build a genocidal society. It argues that the German nation eventually found itself through committing the Holocaust.
Kühne’s current research projects deal with the constructive side of mass violence in a broader historical and comparative perspective as well as with the relation between historiography and collective memories of genocides. Kühne is also working on a book that uncovers how race, gender, class, age, and other categories of difference have intervened in constructions and practices of beauty and body aesthetics in modern global history.
Kühne’s edited or co-edited volumes include The Holocaust and Local History (2011, with Tom Lawson); Massenhaftes Töten. Kriege und Genozide im 20. Jahrhundert (Mass Killing. Wars and Genocides in the 20th Century, 2004, with Peter Gleichmann); Von der Kriegskultur zur Friedenskultur? Zum Mentalitätswandel in Deutschland seit 1945 (War Culture into Peace Culture? Changing German Mentalities since 1945, 2000). A volume on Globalizing Beauty. Body Aesthetics in the 20th Century, co-edited with Hartmut Berghoff, is to appear in 2013.
Degrees
- Ph.D., University of Tubingen, 1992
Affiliated Department(s)
-
Scholarly and Creative Works
Scroll to top.-
Documenting the Armenian Genocide. Essays in Honor of Taner Akçam. Edited by Thomas Kühne, Mary Jane Rein, and Marc Mamigonian (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, 2024).
Palgrave Histories of Genocide
●
2024
Palgrave
-
Marcher au pas et trébucher. Masculinités allemandes à l'épreuve du nazisme et de la guerre
Chapter: Une masculinité « protéenne » : les soldats sous le Troisième ReichPublished by Presses universitaires du Septentrion
●
2022
-
German-American Identity and the Demise of National Histories
German Historians in North America after 1945: Transatlantic Careers and Scholarly Contributions
●
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
March
●
2022
Sponsored by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
-
Ordinary Men and Masculinity: Gendering Holocaust Perpetrators
Social Psychology and the Holocaust
●
Université Toulouse II - Jean Jaurès, France
March
●
2022
Sponsored by Université Toulouse II - Jean Jaurès, France
-
Hitler's Soldiers: Crimes, Resilience, and Ideologies
Book launch for David Harrisville’s The Virtuous Wehrmacht
●
virtual
Februar
●
2022
Sponsored by University of Wisconsin, Madison
-
On Being Adjacent to Historical Violence, ed by Irene Kacandes
Chapter: A Father, a Perpetrator, a Son. Autobiographical Thoughts on Mystery and CuriosityPublished by de Gruyter
●
2022
-
Masculinity and the Dilemmas of Compromise During the Holocaust
Compromised Identities. Perpetration and Complicity, Past and Present
●
London
May
●
2021
Sponsored by University College London
-
Demokratization und Parliamentarization in Germany (1870–1920)
45th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association
●
Indianapolis, IN
October
●
2021
Sponsored by German Studies Association
-
Rethinking the Holocaust Survey: Centering Women, Gender, and Sexuality
53rd Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies
●
Chicago
December
●
2021
Sponsored by Association for Jewish Studies
-
Male Bonding and Mass Violence
●
Cambridge, MA
November
●
2021
Sponsored by Massachusetts Institute of Technology
-
Männlichkeit und Komplizenschaft: Nazis, Christen und Juden im Holocaust
Virtual lecture
●
Hannover, Germany
December
●
2021
Sponsored by Leibniz University
-
The Nazi Volksgemeinschaft: Nation Building Through Genocide
US Military Academy West Point
●
West Point, NY
February
●
2021
Sponsored by United States Military Academy, West Point
-
Masculinity and the Dilemmas of Compromise During the Holocaust
Compromised Identities
●
London
May
●
2021
Sponsored by University College London
-
Gender, War & Citizenship
Roundtable Gender, War & the Western World Since 1800
●
Chapel Hill, NC, USA and Nijmegen, NL (virtual)
March
●
2021
Sponsored by Institute f Advanced Study, Netherlands; American Academy, Berlin
-
Mass Violence and Masculinities
●
Dartmouth College
August
●
2020
Sponsored by Dartmouth College
-
Ian Rich, Holocaust Perpetrators oft he German Police Bataillons: The Mass Murder of Jews, 1940-1942 (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018),
American Historical Review
●
2020
●
Vol. 125
●
Issue #3
U Chicago
●
USA
-
Review of: Veronika Springmann, Gunst und Gewalt. Sport in nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern (Berlin, Metropol 2019),
Historische Zeitschrift
●
2020
●
Vol. 311
●
Issue #2020
Oldenbourg
●
Munich
●
Germany
-
The Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600 Edited by Karen Hagemann, Stefan Dudink, and Sonya O. Rose
Chapter: States, Military Masculinities, and Combat in the Age of World WarsPublished by Oxford University Press
●
2020
-
Agency and the Holocaust. Essays in Honor of Debórah Dwork
Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide
●
2020
●
ISBN #978-3-030-38997-0
Palgrave
-
-
Awards & Grants
-
Outstanding Graduate Mentor/Advisor Award
Clark University
2020
-
Popular Searches
Featured Sites
Copyright © 2024 Clark University
Public Information
|
Privacy Policy
|
Website Accessibility
|
Nondiscrimination Policy