Faculty and Staff
Harry Liebersohn
Employment:
Professor
Dept. of History
309 Gregory Hall
810 South Wright Street
University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, Illinois 61801
Honors Program Faculty
University of Illinois
Home Address:
512 West Washington St.
Urbana, Illinois 61801
Education:
Ph.D. Princeton University, June 1979
M.A., Princeton University, 1975
B.A., New College, Sarasota, Florida, 1973
Books:
The Travelers’ World: Europe to the Pacific (Harvard University Press,
2006).
Aristocratic Encounters: European Travelers and NorthAmerican Indians (Cambridge University Press, 1998; paperback 2001).
Fate and Utopia in German Sociology, 1870-1923
(MIT Press, 1988, hardback and paperback). (Awarded
"Honorable Mention," Morris D. Forkosch Prize of
the Journal of the History of Ideas, 1988.)
Monograph:
Religion and Industrial Society: The Protestant
Social Congress in Wilhelmine Germany, in
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society,
v. 76, pt. 6, 1986.
Co-authored volume:
Harry Liebersohn and Dorothee Schneider, “My Life
in Germany Before and After January 30, 1933”: A Guide
to a Manuscript Collection at Houghton Library,
Harvard University (Transactions
of the American Philosophical Society, v.91, pt.3, 2001).
Honors and Awards:
Guest, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany forthcoming, May-June 2008)
Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study), Berlin,
2006-2007
Arnold O. Beckman Research Award, Campus Research
Board, University of Illinois (awarded simultaneously
with Humanities Release Time in February 1999).
Dilworth Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N. J., 1996-97.
William Koren, Jr., Prize of the Society for French
Historical Studies, 1995, for "Discovering Indigenous
Nobility."
"Honorable Mention," Morris D. Forkosch Prize of
the Journal of the History of Ideas, 1988, for Fate and
Utopia.
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, Wesleyan University, 1980-1981
Articles:
“Reliving an Age of Heroes with Patrick O’Brian,”forthcoming in re thinking History 11/3 (Sept. 2007), 445-458.
"Leopold von Ranke," in John Merriman and Jay Winter,
eds,m, Europe, 1789-1914, 6 vols.(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
2006), vol. 4: 1939-41.
“A Radical Intellectual with Captain Cook: George Forster’s world voyage,”
Common-Place (www.common-place.org), 5/2 (Jan. 2005) (on-line journal).
“European Geographic Societies and Ethnography (1821-1840),” in Philippe Despoix and Justus Fetscher, eds., with Michael Lackner and Nikola von Merveldt, Cross-Cultural Encounters and constructions of Knowledge in the 18th and 19th Century: Non-European and European Travel of Exploration inComparative Perspective [Georg-Forster-Studien, Beiheft 2] (Kassel: Kassel
University Press, 2004), 145-160.
“Scientific Ethnography and Travel, 1750-1850,” in The
Cambridge History of Science, vol.7: The Modern Social Sciences, ed. Theodore
M. Porter and Dorothy Ross (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2003), 100-112.
“Coming of Age in the Pacific: German Ethnography from Chamisso to Krämer,”
in Worldly Provincialism: German Anthropology in the Age of Empire, ed. H. Glenn Penny and Matti Bunzl (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 31-46.
“German Historical Thought from Ranke to Weber: The
Primacy of Politics,” in Companion to Historical
Thought, ed. Lloyd Kramer and Sarah Maza (Oxford: Blackwell,
2002), 166-184.
“Bemerkungen zur Geschichte der Deutschen und der
Weltreisen im späten 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert,”
trans. Gudrun Middell, in Schädel und Skelette als
Objekte und Subjekte einer Welt- und
Menschheitsgeschichte, ed. Michael Geyer [Comparativ,
vol. 10] (Leipzig: Leipziger Univ.-Verl., 2001), 55-67.
"Images of Monarchy: Kamehameha I and the Art of Louis
Choris," in Double Vision: Art Histories and Colonial
Histories in the Pacific, ed. Nicholas Thomas and Diane
Losche (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne, 1999), pp.
44-64. Slightly revised reprint of an essay which
first appeared in Voices (The Quarterly Journal of
the National Library of Australia) 6/4 (Summer 1996-
97), pp. 95-110.
“Zur Kunst der Ethnographie. Zwei Briefe von Louis
Choris an Adelbert von Chamisso,” Historische
Anthropologie, VI/3 (1998), 479-491. [Two letters and
commentary.] (reprinted in Mit den Augen des Fremden: Adelbert von Chamisso - Dichter, naturwissenschaftler, Weltreisender, ed. Klaus dziach (Berlin: Kreuzberg Museum, 2004), 191-194.
"Discovering Indigenous Nobility: Tocqueville,
Chamisso, and Romantic Travel Writing," in The American
Historical Review 99/3 (June 1994), 746-766. (Awarded
the 1995 William Koren, Jr. Prize of the Society for
French Historical Studies, given for the best article
in an American, Canadian, or European journal written
by an American or Canadian scholar).
"Selective Affinities: Three Generations of German
Intellectuals," in Rediscovering History: Culture,
Politics, and the Psyche, ed. Michael S. Roth
(Stanford, 1994), 30-39.
"Weber's Historical Concept of National Identity" in
Hartmut Lehmann and Guenther Roth, Farewell to the
Protestant Ethic (New York: Cambridge, 1993), 123-31.
"Troeltsch's Social Teachings and the Protestant Social
Congress" in Friedrich Wilhelm Graf and Trutz
Rendtorff, Ernst Troeltschs Soziallehren. Studien zu
ihrer Interpretation (Gütersloh: Mohn, c. 1993), 241-57.
"Introduction" (with Daniel Segal) in Crossing
Cultures: Essays in the Displacement of Western
Civilization (Tucson and London, 1992), xi-xix.
" `Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft' und die Kritik der
Gebildeten am deutschen Kaiserreich," in Lars Clausen
and Carsten Schlüter, eds., Hundert Jahre "Gemeinschaft
und Gesellschaft": Ferdinand Tönnies in der
internationalen Diskussion (Opladen, 1991), pp. 17-30.
"The Utopian Forms of Religious Life: Ernst
Troeltsch's 'The Social Teachings of the Christian
Churches,'" in Archives de sciences sociales des
religions LXVI/1 (Jan.-March 1988), pp. 121-144
"Lukács et le concept de travail dans la sociologie
allemande," in L'homme et la société nos. 79-82
(Jan-Dec. 1986), pp. 53-62. English translation:
"Lukåcs and the Concept of Work in German Sociology,"
in Georg Lukács: Theory, Culture, and Politics, ed.
Judith Marcus and Zoltán Tarr (New Brunswick and
Oxford, 1989), pp. 63-71.
"Educated Elites in America and Germany" in
Bildungsbürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Werner
Conze and Jurgen Kocka (Stuttgart, 1984), pp. 163-186
"Leopold von Wiese and the Ambivalence of
Functionalist Sociology," in Archives européenes
de sociologie XXIII (1982), 123-149
Reviews:
Review of Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the extinction of Primitive Races, 1800-1930, Social History 30/2 (May 2005), 241-242.
Review of Lee Wallace, Sexual Encounters: Pacific Texts, Modern Sexualities, Journal of the History of Sexuality 13/3 (July 2004), 393-395.
Review of Master and Commander: The Far Side ofthe World, Dir. Peter Weir, American Historical Review 109/1 (Feb. 2004), 246-247.
Review of Larry Wolf, Venice and the Slavs: The
Discovery of Dalmatia in the Age of Enlightenment,
Journal of Modern History 75/2 (June 2003), 440-442.
Review of Germans and Indians: Fantasies, Encounters, Projections, ed. C.
Calloway, G. Gemünden, and S. Zantop, American Historical Review, April 2003, 484-486.
Review of Andreas Motsch, Lafitau et l’émergence du discours ethnographique, Journal of American History, March 2003, 1505-1506.
Review essay, "Recent Works on Travel Writing," Journal
of Modern History 68 (September 1996), 617-628
Review of Frederick C. Beiser, Enlightenment,
Revolution, and Romanticism: The Genesis of Modern
German Political Thought, 1790-1800, in Journal of
Modern History LXVII/1 (March 1995), 209-211.
Review of Harvey Goldman, Politics, Death, and the
Devil, in American Historical Review, April 1994, 546-547.
Review essay, "Overcoming Nietzsche," in New German
Critique LXIII (Fall 1994), 181-187.
Review of James A. Boon, Affinities and Extremes:
Crisscrossing the Bittersweet Ethnology of East Indies
History, Hindu-Balinese Culture, and Indo-European
Allure, in Journal of Modern History LXV/3 (Sept.
1993), 581-2.
Review of Woodruff D. Smith, Politics and the Sciences of Culture in Germany, 1840-1920, in American Historical Review October 1992, 1236.
Review of Harbsmeier & Larsen, eds., The Writing of
World Histories, in American Ethnologist XVIII/2 (May 1991), 374.
Review of Bruce Mazlish, A New Science: The Breakdown of Connections and the Birth of Sociology, in American Historical Review, 96/1 (Feb. 1991), pp. 132-133.
Review of Wolf Lepenies, The Three Cultures:
Sociology between Science and Literature, in
American Historical Review 95/5 (Dec. 1990), pp. 1491-1493
Review essay, "Masculine/Feminine: The Many Women of
Max Weber," in Telos, no.78 (Winter 1988-89), pp.123-129
Review of Wolfgang Mommsen, ed., Max Weber and
his Contemporaries, in Contemporary Sociology XVIII/3
(May 1989), pp. 449-451
Review essay on Ernst Troeltsch in History and
Theory XXV/1 (1986), pp. 87-95
Review essay on Georg Simmel in History and Theory
XXII/2 (1984), pp. 261-267
Review of Soziologie in Deutschland, ed. M.R. Lepsius,
and other volumes on sociology in Germany, in The
Journal of Interdisciplinary History XIV/4 (Spring
1984), pp. 851-855
Review of Wolf Lepenies, Geschichte der Soziologie,
in ISIS LXX/2 (1983), 276-278
Review of S. Collini, Liberalism and Sociology,
The Journal of Interdisciplinary History XII/3
(Winter 1982), pp. 529-530
Review of Klaus Theweleit, Männerphantasien, in
The Radical History Review XX (Spring-Summer 1979),
pp. 53-58
Lectures, Conferences, etc.:
Riskante Geschenke. Über den Diskurs von der Gabe. Talk
presented to Seminar ‚Riskiken des Kulturbegriffs. Religionsanthropologie western und heute.’ Freie Universität, Berlin, Sommersemester 2007. Session of Tuesday 29 May, 2007.
„Ideengeschichte als Globalgeschichte: Europäische Reisende und ihre Geschenke, 1750-1925,“ Berliner Kolleg für Vergleichende Geschichte Europas, 23 April 2007
„Ideengeschichte als Globalgeschichte: Europäische Reisende und ihre Geschenke, 1750-1925,“ Research Colloquium for Modern and Contemporary
History (Forschungskolloquium Neuere und Neuste Geschichte), Universität Konstanz, 9 Mai 2007
“Travel and Translation,” Europa im Nahen Osten/Der Nahe Osten in Europa series, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, February 7, 2007.
Intellectual history as global history: European travel encounters, 1750-1925. Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, March 6, 2007.
“The Gift in Modern Intellectual History,” panel on Historians and Marcel
Mauss’s Essay on The Gift, American Historical Association meeting,
Philadelphia, January 8, 2006
“Religion and Cultural Encounter in Modern Germany,” Midwest German Historians Workshop, October 21-23, 2005
Reflections on “Reliving an Age of Heroes With Patrick O’Brian,”
second conference on historical re-enactments, Huntington Library, May 13-14, 2005
“Intellectual History as Global Knowledge,” Intellectual History/Cultural History/Critical Theory, Society for the Humanities, Cornell University, Friday April 29-30, 2005
“Anger, Civility and Cosmopolitanism,” Cosmopolitanism and Colonialism, Joint Initiative in German and European Studies, University of Toronto, 17 December 2004
Closing Remarks and Discussion, “The Early Modern Travel Narrative: Production and Consumption,” USC-Huntington Library Early Modern Studies Institute, April 30-May 1, 2004
“Reliving an Age of Heroes With Patrick O’Brian,” Extreme and Sentimental History: A Conference Devoted to Issues of Historical Re-Enactment,” April 2-3, 2004, Vanderbilt University, April 2-3, 2004
“The Peculiarity of Knowledge Networks: Pacific Missionaries as Ethnographers, 1800-1830,” Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction, Fifth Biennial Meeting, John Carter Brown Library, Providence, Rhode Island, Feb.19-21, 2004
“Networks of Knowledge, Networks of Power,” “Knowledge in Action” panel, American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., January 11, 2004
“Civilizing and Religious Missions in Hawaii,” American Historical Association/Pacific Coast Branch, Honolulu, July 31 - Aug 3, 2003
“Scientific Travel and the Global Network of Knowledge: Louis Choris’s voyages pittoresques,” Europeanist graduate student colloquium, Dept. of History, University of Chicago, April 24, 2003.
“Power, Knowledge, and Scientific Expeditions, 1750-1850,” “Spaces of Exploration” Third Conference on Laboratory History, Science, Technology and Society Studies Workshops, University of Illinois, 7-8 March 2003.
“Scientific Travel and the Global Network of Knowledge: Louis Choris’s voyages pittoresques,” Davis Center, Dept. of History, Princeton University, Feb. 21, 2003.
“Patrons, Travelers, and Scientific World Voyages, 1750-1850,” Seascapes, Littoral Cultures, and Trans-Oceanic Exchanges, sponsored by the American Historical Association, Washington D.C., Feb. 12-15, 2003.
“Scientific Travel and the Global Network of Knowledge: Louis Choris’s voyages pittoresques, 1815-1828,” Department of German, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 31 Jan. 2003.
“Wissenschaftliche Reisen und das weltweite Netz des Wissens 1750-1850,” Simon-Dubnow-Institut, Universität Leipzig, 17 June 2002.
“Introduction” and “The Travel Diary in the Network of Knowledge, 1750-1850,” conference, “The Science (and Art) of Travel Writing, 1750-1850,” IFK (Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften), 14-15 June 2002.
Voyages de découvertes et réseau global des connaissances scientifiques: le cas de Louis Choris,” École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, seminar, “Sciences et empires: la construction des savoirs hors d’occident,” Paris, 7 June 2002.
“The Pacific as Multiple Frontier, 1800-1850,” American
Historical Association Convention, San Francisco, Jan. 3-6, 2002.
“Die Welt der Reisenden: Louis Choris’ ‘Voyage pittoresque autour du monde,” University of Konstanz, Germany, 26 June 2001.
“Richard Strauss’s World,” Classical Immersion series, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, University of Illinois, 24 January 2001.
“Beethoven’s World,” Classical Immersion series, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, University of Illinois, 5 November 2000.
“Generations and Genealogies” conference on
“Generations” in honor of Carl Schorske,
Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften,
Vienna, 8-10 June 2000.
“Scientific Travelers in Hawaii, 1815-1830,” Forum on
European Expansion and Global Interaction, St.
Petersburg, Florida, Feb. 17-19, 2000.
“The Early Geographic Societies and Their Reception
of Ethnographic Travel Reports, 1821-1840,” paper
presented to a conference on “‘Reisebilder’ -
Forschungsreisen, Begegnungen und Wissensformen 1730-
1830,” 4-6 October 1999, Wolfenbüttel, Germany
“Wissenschaftliche Reisende als Weltbürger, 1815-1850,”
Graduiertenkolleg “Reiseliteratur und
Kulturanthropologie,” Universität Paderborn, June 15, 1999
“Wissenschaftliche Reisende als Weltbürger, 1815-1850,”
Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte, Göttingen, June 22, 1999
“Europäische Reisende und Demokratie in America,”
Oesterreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, May 10, 1999
“Max Weber’s ‘Vocation’ Essays as Modernist Classics,”
The University of Kansas, March 16, 1999
“French and German Travelers as Hunters in North
America, 1750-1850,” Davis Center for Historical Study,
Department of History, Princeton University, October
10, 1997
Television appearance on C-Span for discussion of
Tocqueville and American Indians, August 8, 1997.
"Savage Nobles: Romantic Travelers and American
Indians," Modern Europe Colloquium, Department of
History, Princeton University, April 10, 1997.
"European Travelers and North American Indians, 1750-
1850," Social Science Thursday Luncheon Seminar, School
of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study,
Princeton
"American Indians in German Travel Writing and Art,
1815-1848," American Historical Association, New York,
January 3, 1997
"The International Brotherhood: Louis Choris and the
Peoples of the Pacific," Department of History,
University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, August 5, 1996
"The International Brotherhood: Louis Choris and the
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Peoples of the Pacific," Conference in Honor of Bernard
Smith ("Reimagining the Pacific"), Canberra, Australia,
July 31-August 4, 1996
"How Did Nineteenth-Century Europeans 'See' Us? The
Protestant Ethic As Revolution in Travelers'
Discourse," Boston University, 18 April 1996.
"The International Brotherhood: Louis Choris and the
Peoples of the Pacific," Organization of American
Historians meeting, Chicago, 31 March 1996
"American Indians in German Travel Writing and Art,
1815-1848," German history colloquium, Georgetown
University, 6 April 1995.
Discussant, "Max Weber im aktuellen Streit um die
Moderne. . .," German Studies Association, Dallas, 1
October 1994.
"Colonial Resentment and the Romantic Definitions of
Europe," Ninth International Conference of
Europeanists, Chicago, 1 April 1994.
"Tocqueville and the North American Frontier," Dept. of
History, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, 20
Sept. 1993.
"Jewish Memoirs: Identity and Community before 1933,"
University of Bayreuth, Amerika-Forchungsstelle (co-
delivered with Dorothee Schneider).
"German Intellectuals and National Identity," Concordia University
and Goethe Institute, Montreal, February 1991
"Der Evangelisch-Soziale Kongress und seine
amerikanische Gegenstücke," Conference on
Sozialprotestantismus im Kaiserreich, Werner-Reimers-
Stiftung, January 1991.
"Noble Savages and Savage Nobles: Aristocratic
Travelogues, 1780-1830," American Historical
Association Convention, December 1990.
"Adelbert von Chamisso's Voyage Around the World,"
Colloquium on the Human Sciences, Morris Fishbein
Center, University of Chicago, November 1990.
"German Intellectuals and National Identity,"
Conference on Modernism and the Social Sciences,
Bellagio Conference Center, Bellagio, Italy, May 1990.
"Max Weber's Concept of National Identity," Conference on The Protestant Ethic, German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C., March 1990
"How Colonizing Shaped Europe," Claremont Conference on "How Colonizing Shaped Europe and Europe's New Worlds," April 1989
"Ernst Troeltsch's Social Teachings and the Protestant
Social Congress," International Congress of the Ernst
Troeltsch Society, Augsburg, West Germany, September
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1988.
"Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft and the Educated Elite's
Critique of the German Empire," Third Ferdinand Tönnies
s
ymposium, Ferdinand Tönnies Society, Kiel, West
Germany, November 1987
"The Concept of the Calling in German Sociology,"
Centenary Lukács - Bloch Conference, Goethe Institute,
Paris, France, March 1985
"Cultural Criticism in Imperial Germany: Stefan
George and Georg Simmel," the Mid-Atlantic
German History Seminar, University of Maryland,
October 1983
"Walter Benjamin as Historian," the Center for the
Humanities, Wesleyan University, March 1981
"Max Weber's Work Ethic," presented to the Department
of the History and Sociology of Science, University of
Pennsylvania, December 1980
Current Administrative Responsibilities
Fellowsprecher, Wissenschaftskolleg, 2006-2007 (the Wiko Fellows elect two of their members to serve as their spokesmen to the administration).
Prize Committee:
Chair, Leo Gershoy Award Committee of the American
Historical Association (prize for seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century Western European history)
history), 1999; member, Gershoy Committee, 1996-1999
Conferences Organized:
Organizer, “Naturalist Voyagers: Symposium in Honor of Richard Burkhardt,” Center for Advanced Study, UIUC, November 10-11, 2005
Organizer, “The Science (and Art) of Travel Writing,
1750-1850,” Internationales Forschungszentrum
Kulturwissenschaften, Vienna, June 14-15 2002
Co-organizer, Midwest German History Workshop, Sept.
22-23, 2001 (cancelled in the wake of Sept. 11th; took place Nov. 8-9, 2002)
Co-organizer, "How Colonizing Shaped Europe and
Europe's New Worlds," The Claremont Colleges, April 7- 8, 1989
Courses recently taught:
Cosmopolitan Europe (graduate seminar)
German Cultural History (graduate seminar)
Problems in Modern European History (graduate seminar)
Thought and Society in Modern Europe, 1789-Present (undergraduate lectures and discussion)
Europe, 1815-1870 (undergraduate lectures and discussion)
The History of Travel (undergraduate seminar)
Western Civilization from 1660 to the Present
Fellowships and Grants:
Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute for Advanced Study), Berlin, 2006-2007.
Guest, Max Planck Institute for History, Göttingen/Germany, May- June 2003
Associate, Center for Advanced Study, University of
Illinois, Spring Semester 2002.
Released Time award in the Humanities, Campus Research
Board, University of Illinois, Spring Semester 2000.
Dilworth Member, Institute for Advanced Study, School
of Historical Studies, Princeton, New Jersey, 1996-97.
Fellow, Center for Values and Ethics, University of
Illinois, Spring 1993.
Summer Grant Recipient, Campus Research Board,
University of Illinois, Summer 1992.
Summer Grant Recipient, Campus Research Board,
University of Illinois, Summer 1991.
Grant Recipient, Mellon "Fresh Combinations" Grant
(competitive internal Claremont award), 1987-1989.
Grant Recipient, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, 1988.
Research Grant Recipient, American Philosophical
Society, June-August 1983.
Grant Recipient, Recent Recipients of the Ph.D.
Program, American Council of Learned Societies, 1982.
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, The Center for the Humanities,
Wesleyan University, 1980-1981.
Summer Research Grant, German Academic Exchange
Service (DAAD), June-August 1980.
Research Scholar, German Academic Exchange Service,
1975-1977.
University Fellowship Recipient, Princeton University,
1973-1975.