Welcome!

I'm a historian of modern Germany and also have broad comparative and international interests. In fall 2007 Princeton University is publishing my most recent book, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy. I'm also working on the entwined histories of forced deportations and human rights through an examination of the European state system and German imperial practices at home and abroad, which is discussed further here. I'm series editor of Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity, which I've established with Brigitta van Rheinberg, editor-in-chief of Princeton University Press. The dual nature of my interests -- German history and comparative and transnational inquiries -- is also evident in my two earlier books A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation and Creating German Communism, 1890-1990, and in my teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

In 2006-09 I'm serving as chair of the History Department. It's an exciting time. We've hired a great many new colleagues in the last ten years and there is a high level of intellectual energy among the historians that spills over into our classrooms and our research and writing. The Department is hiring additional colleagues in a number of fields, some of which are new to us and promise to bring interesting and innovative departures.

Since 2001 I have also served as the Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair in the College of Liberal Arts. The Chair is dedicated to issues of ethnic and national conflict, genocides, and human rights, with special attention devoted to the Armenian genocide. Along with colleagues in Law, Political Science, History, Sociology, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and other places on campus, we've built a vibrant intellectual community committed to research and teaching on human rights in a global context. My work on genocides and appointment to the Ohanessian Chair has also led to an ongoing involvement in the Turkish-Armenian Workshop, an important and exciting effort to create dialogue among scholars on the history of the late Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Genocide.