David Blackbourn

Cornelius Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor of History, Emeritus

David Blackbourn has written on a wide range of subjects within the field of German history since the eighteenth century. He is the author of six books: Class, Religion and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (1980), The Peculiarities of German History (with Geoff Eley, 1984), Populists and Patricians (1987), Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century Germany (1993), winner of the Hans Rosenberg Prize, History of Germany 1780-1918: The Long Nineteenth Century (2nd ed, 2002), and The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany (2006), winner of the George Mosse Prize and the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Prize for Best Book in Forest and Conservation History. He has also co-edited two volumes. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, President of the Friends of the German Historical Institute Washington, and a member of the editorial board of the journal Past and Present. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, among others, and his work has appeared in eleven languages. He is currently working on a book about Germany in the World, 1500-1800, a global history.

David Blackbourn has taught courses on Western Civilization, modern European history, modern German history, and the history of religion and popular piety. He is currently teaching courses on Germany in the Twentieth Century, Religion and Popular Culture in Nineteenth-Century Europe, and Max Weber in His Time, as well as a graduate seminar on Problems and Sources in Modern German History.