Helmut Walser Smith
Martha
Rivers Ingram Professor of History at Vanderbilt University May 4, 2004 Martha Rivers Ingram Center for the Performing Arts Blair School
of Music - Vanderbilt University - Nashville, Tennessee Nashville, Tennessee - Helmut Walser Smith (Ph.D. Yale, 1992) was named the first Martha Rivers Ingram Professor of History at Vanderbilt University at a ceremony on May 4, 2004 in the Martha Rivers Ingram Center for the Performing Arts in the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University. His books and articles on German history focus on the relations between religious and ethnic groups: Protestants and Catholics, Christians and Jews, Germans and their neighbors. His first book, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 1870-1914 (1995), examined how the conflict between Protestants and Catholics shaped the way Germans imagined themselves as a national community. His newest book, The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town (2002), calls on scholarship in literature, sociology, anthropology and history in a study of anti-Semitic violence told as a murder mystery. An examination of a relatively obscure case in which Jews were accused of the ritual murder of a Christian boy, the book explores how a small town in the year 1900 became enthralled in anti-Semitic hatred. Accolades for The Butcher's Tale include the Fraenkel Prize for the best work in contemporary history, an L.A. Times Non-Fiction Book of the Year award, a finalist position for the National Jewish Book Award, and a citation by Damals, a popular history magazine in Germany, as one of the three most innovative works of history in 2002. Smith also has lectured widely about the book, both in the United States and in Europe, and he has appeared on C-Span and a number of German radio shows. Since coming to Vanderbilt in 1991, Smith has taught a broad range of courses to undergraduate and graduate students. In 1997, he was awarded the coveted Jeffrey Nordhaus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Smith has been centrally involved in teaching about the Holocaust. In conjunction with Vanderbilt's Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Smith co-directed and then edited a book titled The Holocaust and Other Genocides: History, Representation, Ethics, which has been distributed throughout the secondary schools of Tennessee. Smith lives in
Nashville with his wife, Meike G. Werner, a professor of German literature
at Vanderbilt. They have a 7-month-old son, Luca. Martha Rivers Ingram Chair of History The Martha Rivers Ingram Chair of History is made possible by a gift from Martha Rivers Ingram, chairman of Vanderbilt University's Board of Trust and chairman of Nashville-based Ingram Industries. Mrs. Ingram's leadership continues more than five decades of Ingram family service on Vanderbilt's governing board. A nationally prominent philanthropist and supporter of education and the arts, she heads a family of the most significant donors in the University's history whose generosity includes support for cancer research, endowed chairs and scholarships, and new facilities. A graduate of Vassar and native of Charleston, S.C., Mrs. Ingram is an articulate advocate of a broad liberal arts education, and she established the chair to support the liberal arts, particularly history, which in college was, and today remains, a passion of hers.
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