Faculty Profile
- Retallack, James, D.Phil, Oxford
- Professor, St. George Campus
- james.retallack@utoronto.ca
- Office: MU 120N & SS 2084
Field: Modern Europe, Germany, regional, political and social history, nationalism.
Professor Retallack teaches courses and supervises Ph.D. field preparation in European history from 1770 to 1945.
His research interests (1830-1918) include German regional history, nationalism, antisemitism, elections, and historiography. His books (authored and edited) include Germany’s Second Reich: Portraits and Pathways (hb/pb. 2015); Imperial Germany 1871-1918: The Short Oxford History of Germany (pb. 2008); Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place (2007, pb. 2014); The German Right, 1860-1920: Political Limits of the Authoritarian Imagination (hb/pb. 2006); Wilhelminism and Its Legacies (2003, pb. 2004); Saxony in German History (2000); Sachsen in Deutschland (pb. 2000); Germany in the Age of Kaiser Wilhelm II (pb. 1996, Chinese ed. 2013); Modernisierung und Region (pb. 1995); Between Reform, Reaction, and Resistance (1993); Elections, Mass Politics, and Social Change in Modern Germany (1992, pb. 2003); and Notables of the Right (1988). He has also published a volume of on-line documents and images on Bismarckian Germany for the German Historical Institute, Washington DC.
He has held grants, fellowships, and research prizes from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, the SSHRC of Canada, and the Jackman Humanities Institute. He has held Visiting Professorships at the Free University Berlin (1993-4) and the University of Göttingen (2002-3) and he was Visiting Scholar at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal (2014). He is General Editor of “Oxford Studies in Modern European History” and was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2011. His book Red Saxony: Election Battles and the Spectre of Democracy in Germany, 1860-1918 will appear with Oxford University Press in 2016.