Alon Confino

Department of History - University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
Phone: (434) 924-6412
Home phone: (434) 977-9729
E-mail: confino@virginia.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Professional Positions:

• Full Professor of History, University of Virginia, 2006
• Associate Professor of History, University of Virginia, 1998
• Assistant Professor of History, University of Virginia, 1992

• Visiting Professor, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, spring semester 2007.
• Visiting Professor, Tel Aviv University, fall semester 2006.
• Visiting Professor, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, spring semester 2006.
• Visiting Professor of History, NYU/UVa program in London, spring semester 2003.
• Visiting Professor of History, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1999.

• Ph.D. History, University of California, Berkeley, 1992.
• M.A. History, University of California, Berkeley, 1986.
• B.A. History, University of Tel Aviv, Israel, 1985.

• Foundational Pasts: An Essay on the Holocaust, the French Revolution, and Historical Understandings.
• A book manuscript: Pleasures in Germany: The Culture of Traveling under Nazism, Communism, and Liberal Democracy, 1933-1989.

PUBLICATIONS:

Books:

• “Histories and Memories of Twentieth Century Germany.” A special double-issue of History and Memory (vol. 17, nos. 1-2, 2005).
• “Viewed from the Locality: the Local, National, and Global.” Co-edited with Ajay Skaria. A special issue of National Identities, vol. 4, no. 1 (March 2002).
• “Regimes of Consumer Culture.” Co-edited with Rudy Koshar. A special issue of German History, vol. 19, no. 2 (2001).

• “The Travels of Bettina Humpel: One Stasi File and Narratives of State and Self in East Germany,” in Paul Betts and Katherine Pence, eds., Socialist Modern: East German Politics, Society, and Culture (University of Michigan Press), 2007, forthcoming.
• “Freud, Moses, and Modern Nationhood,” in Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism, ed. Ilana Pardes (Niemayer, 2006, forthcoming).
• "Lo local, una esencia de toda nación," Ayer 62 (Fall 2006), forthcoming. A special issue edited by X. M. Núñez, La construcción de la región en Europa: política, identidad, cultura.
• “Intellectuals and the Lure of Exile: Home and Exile in the Autobiographies of Edward Said and George Steiner,” The Hedgehog Review (Fall 2005): 20-28.
• “Remembering the Second World War, 1945-1965: Narratives of Victimhood and Genocide,” Cultural Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Forum on Folklore and Popular Culture, Vol. 4, 2005: http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~caforum/volume4/vol4_article3.html With responses by Robert Moeller (History: UC Irvine) and Jay Winter (History: Yale).
• “Fantasies about the Jews: Cultural Reflections on the Holocaust,” History and Memory (vol. 17, nos. 1-2, 2005): 296-322.
• “Telling about Germany: Narratives of Memory and Culture,” Journal of Modern History 76 (June 2004): 389-416.
• “Dissonance, Normality and the Historical Method: Why did some Germans Think of Tourism after May 8, 1945?” in Life after Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe during the 1940s and 1950s, eds. Richard Bessel and Dirk Schumann (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 323-347.
• “Noises of the Past.” Co-written with Peter Fritzsche. In: The Work of Memory: New Directions in the Study of German Society and Culture. Co-edited with Peter Fritzsche (University of Illinois Press, 2002): 1-21.
• “Federalism and the Heimat Idea in Imperial Germany,” in German Federalism: Past, Present, and Future, ed. Maiken Umbach (London: Macmillan, 2002), pp. 70-90.
• “The Local Life of Nationhood.” Co-written with Ajay Skaria. National Identities, vol. 4, no. 1 (March 2002): 7-24.
• “On Localness and Nationhood,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute London, vol. XXIII, no. 2 (November 2001): 7-27.
• “‘This lovely country you will never forget.’ Kriegserinnerungen und Heimatkonzepte in der westdeutschen Nachkriegszeit,” in Das Erbe der Provinz. Heimatkultur und Geschichtspolitik in Deutschland nach 1945, ed. Habbo Knoch (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2001), pp. 235-251.
• “Regimes of Consumer Culture: New Narratives in Twentieth-Century German History.” Co-written with Rudy Koshar. German History, vol. 19, no. 2 (2001): 135-161.
• “Traveling as a Culture of Remembrance: Traces of National Socialism in West Germany, 1945-1960,” History and Memory, vol. 12, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2000): 92-121.
• “Remembering Talbiyah: On Edward Said’s Out of Place,” Israel Studies, vol. 5, no. 2 (Fall 2000): 182-198.
• “Konzepte von Heimat, Region, Nation und Staat in Wörttemberg von der Reichsgründungszeit bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Föderative Nation: Deutschlandkonzepte von der Reformation bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg, ed. Dieter Langewiesche and Georg Schmidt (Munich, 2000), pp. 345-359.
• “Tourismus in West- und Ostdeutschland, 1945-1990. Ein Forschungsbericht,” Voyage. Jahrbuch für Reise und Tourismusforschung, vol. 2, (1998): 145-152.
• “Edgar Reitz’s Heimat and German Nationhood: Film, Memory, and Understandings of the Past,” German History, vol. 16, no. 2 (June 1998): 185-208.
• “Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method,” American Historical Review, vol. 105, no.2 (December 1997): 1386-1403. Reprinted in Historiography: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, ed. Robert Burns (London: Routledge, 2005).
• “Localities of a Nation: Celebrating Sedan-Day in the German Empire,” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte, vol. 26 (1997): 61-74.
• “Identities and Differences.” Review essay of Simonetta Soldani and Gabrielle Turi, eds., Making Italians. School and Culture in Modern Italy. Vol. I, The Birth of the Nation-State, Vol. II, A Mass Society (Il Mulino, Bologna: 1993). Social History, vol. 22, no. 2 (May 1997): 193-200.
• “Consumer Culture is in Need of Attention: German Cultural Studies and the Commercialization of the Past,” in A User’s Guide to German Cultural Studies, ed. Scott Denham, et al (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 181-188.
• “The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Heimat, National Memory and the German Empire, 1871-1918,” History and Memory, vol. 5, no. 1 (1993): 42-86.

• “National Holidays” and “Memory, Collective” in Modern Germany: An Encyclopedia of History, People, and Culture, 1871-1990, eds. Dieter Buse and Jürgen Doerr (New York: Garland, 1998): 648-649, 682.
• “Nationalism,” in A Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing, ed. D. R. Woolf (New York, 1998), 650-651.
• “Alltagsgeschichte” and “Collective Memory,” in The Encyclopedia of Social History, ed. Peter Stearns (New York, 1994), 27, 149-150.

• “Bittere Wahrheiten in Nahost,” Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, (July 2001): 775-779.
• “On Disney's America: Consumer Culture and Perceptions of the Past.” Perspectives. American Historical Association Newsletter, March 1995: 8-10.

• “Freud, Moses, and Modern Nationhood,” Mikarov, vol. 15, Spring 2005: 76-88 (in Hebrew).
• “Remembering Talbiyah: On Edward Said’s Out of Place,” Alpayim (An Interdisciplinary Publication for Contemporary Thought and Literature), June 2003: 55-72 (in Hebrew).
• "The Nation As a Local Metaphor: Heimat, National Memory and the German Empire, 1871-1918," Zmanim. A Historical Quarterly (Published by the Aranne School of History at Tel Aviv University), vol. 60, Fall 1997 (in Hebrew): 18-28.
• “Die Nation als lokale Metapher: Heimat, nationale Zugehörigkeit und das Deutsche Reich, 1871-1918,” Zeitschrift fär Geschichtswissenschaft, vol. 44, no. 5 (1996): 421-435.

• The Lady Davis Visiting Professorship, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 2006.
• Institute of Advanced Studies, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 2005-2006.
• University of Virginia: Research Summer Grant, 2004.
• University of Virginia: Fellow in the Center of Advanced Studies, 2004.
• University of Virginia: Research Summer Grant, 2003.
• University of Virginia: Research Summer Grant, 2001.
• Humboldt-Stiftung: The Humboldt Fellowship, Berlin, 1999-2000.
• University of Virginia: Fellow in the Center of Advanced Studies, 1996-7.
• Social Science Research Council: The Berlin Program Post-Doctoral Fellowship, 1996-1997.
• University of Virginia: Research Summer Grant, 1995.
• Israel Academy of Sciences: Wolfsohn Post-Doctoral Fellowship, 1992-1993.
• Tel Aviv University, Institute for German History: Post-Doctoral Fellowship, 1992-1993.
• University of California, Berkeley: Chancellor Fellowship, 1991-1992.
• University of California, Berkeley, Institute of International Studies: John L. Simpson Fellowship, 1991-1992.
• University of California, Berkeley: Hans Rosenberg Fellowship for European Studies, 1990-1991.
• DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Fellowship for doctoral research in West Germany, 1988-1990.
• University of California, Berkeley: Humanities Research Grant for Dissertation, 1988.
• Social Science Research Council: Doctoral Research Fellowship for Western Europe, 1988.
• Tel Aviv University, Institute for German History: Doctoral Research Fellowship, 1988.
• Fulbright Fellowship to support two years of graduate work toward the Ph.D., 1985-1987 at UC Berkeley.
• DAAD, Goethe Institute Language Course, Berlin, summer 1984.