Professor of History
David B. Dennis (Ph.D., UCLA, 1991; B.A., University of Wisconsin, 1984) is a Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago working in the areas of Western Humanities, Modern European Cultural and Intellectual History, Modern German History, Music and History, Beethoven Studies, and the Cultural History of Computing. Having studied with scholars such as George Mosse, Harvey Goldberg, Robert Wohl, Eugen Weber, Saul Friedlander, Robert Winter, and others, Dennis’s own scholarship has mainly focused on German cultural and political history.
His Google Scholar Profile lists Reviews, Mentions, and Citations of these and other works included below.
His Beethoven in German Politics, 1870-1989 (Yale University Press, 1996) examines the evocations and uses of Beethoven’s biography and music by all of the major parties of 19th- and 20th-century German political culture. The book attracted considerable international attention and was reviewed in both scholarly and popular media, including The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The New Statesman and Society, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Music and Letters, The American Historical Review, the German Studies Review, The Journal of Modern History, the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Music & Letters, Notes, Central Euopean History, The Globe and Mail, The Beethoven Journal, La Stampa, New Statesman and Society, NRC Handelsblad, BBC Music Magazine, Opera News, Chamber Music, and many other publications.
Dennis’s next book, Inhumanities: Nazi Interpretations of Western Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2012), provides an intensive and comprehensive examination of the main publication of the Nazi Party, the Völkischer Beobachter, showing how that newspaper interpreted the history of Western culture, from the Ancient Greeks through the Weimar Era, in the context of Nazi ideology. Nazi leaders viewed their movement as the culmination of Western civilization, and this book leads readers through their cultural self-justification. Indeed, it is the first comprehensive survey of the terms National Socialist propagandists used to discuss the great names of European culture. It received excellent critical attention from The Times Literary Supplement, The American Historical Review, The Journal of Modern History, Jewish Review of Books, The Literary Review, the European History Quarterly, Reviews in History, Cosmopolitan Review, MacClean's, the Toronto Globe and Mail, Svenska Dagbladett, and other scholarly, press, and media outlets. Inhumanities was also translated into Portuguese as Deshumanidades: Interpretacoes Nazistas da Cultural Ocidental, Joao Barata, trans. (San Paulo, Brazil: Madras Editora, 2014 https://madras.com.br/desumanidades)
He has written numerous book chapters and articles appearing in a variety of collections and journals, including The Cambridge Compantion to Beethoven, The Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia, Searching for Common Ground: Diskurse zur deutschen Identität 1750-1871, Wagner’s Meistersinger: Performance, History, Representation, Opera in a Multicultural World: Coloniality, Culture, Performance International Journal of Humanities, Humanities: The Magazine of the NEH, the Journal of Political and Military Sociology, and the German Studies Review.
He is currently writing Modern German Cultural History in Context, which will introduce the most famous German cultural movements and creators from the 18th century through the 20th century as related to the main stages of political development in modern German history. It includes analysis of major literary texts (of various genres), works of visual art (in various media), music compositions (from "serious" to "entertainment" styles), films (through the 20th century), and other great works by the most famous creators of each major stage in modern German cultural history. It is scheduled for publication with Routledge.
Another interdisciplinary project, Modern History of Computing and Its Cultures co-authored with George Thiruvathukal, surveys the stages of computing history with critical historiographical methods and explores the relationships between these developments and their social and cultural contexts.
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About David B. Dennis
David B. Dennis (Ph.D., UCLA, 1991; B.A., University of Wisconsin, 1984) is a Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago working in the areas of Western Humanities, Modern European Cultural and Intellectual History, Modern German History, Music and History, Beethoven Studies, and the Cultural History of Computing. Having studied with scholars such as George Mosse, Harvey Goldberg, Robert Wohl, Eugen Weber, Saul Friedlander, Robert Winter, and others, Dennis’s own scholarship has mainly focused on German cultural and political history.
His Google Scholar Profile lists Reviews, Mentions, and Citations of these and other works included below.
His Beethoven in German Politics, 1870-1989 (Yale University Press, 1996) examines the evocations and uses of Beethoven’s biography and music by all of the major parties of 19th- and 20th-century German political culture. The book attracted considerable international attention and was reviewed in both scholarly and popular media, including The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The New Statesman and Society, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Music and Letters, The American Historical Review, the German Studies Review, The Journal of Modern History, the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Music & Letters, Notes, Central Euopean History, The Globe and Mail, The Beethoven Journal, La Stampa, New Statesman and Society, NRC Handelsblad, BBC Music Magazine, Opera News, Chamber Music, and many other publications.
Dennis’s next book, Inhumanities: Nazi Interpretations of Western Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2012), provides an intensive and comprehensive examination of the main publication of the Nazi Party, the Völkischer Beobachter, showing how that newspaper interpreted the history of Western culture, from the Ancient Greeks through the Weimar Era, in the context of Nazi ideology. Nazi leaders viewed their movement as the culmination of Western civilization, and this book leads readers through their cultural self-justification. Indeed, it is the first comprehensive survey of the terms National Socialist propagandists used to discuss the great names of European culture. It received excellent critical attention from The Times Literary Supplement, The American Historical Review, The Journal of Modern History, Jewish Review of Books, The Literary Review, the European History Quarterly, Reviews in History, Cosmopolitan Review, MacClean's, the Toronto Globe and Mail, Svenska Dagbladett, and other scholarly, press, and media outlets. Inhumanities was also translated into Portuguese as Deshumanidades: Interpretacoes Nazistas da Cultural Ocidental, Joao Barata, trans. (San Paulo, Brazil: Madras Editora, 2014 https://madras.com.br/desumanidades)
He has written numerous book chapters and articles appearing in a variety of collections and journals, including The Cambridge Compantion to Beethoven, The Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia, Searching for Common Ground: Diskurse zur deutschen Identität 1750-1871, Wagner’s Meistersinger: Performance, History, Representation, Opera in a Multicultural World: Coloniality, Culture, Performance International Journal of Humanities, Humanities: The Magazine of the NEH, the Journal of Political and Military Sociology, and the German Studies Review.
He is currently writing Modern German Cultural History in Context, which will introduce the most famous German cultural movements and creators from the 18th century through the 20th century as related to the main stages of political development in modern German history. It includes analysis of major literary texts (of various genres), works of visual art (in various media), music compositions (from "serious" to "entertainment" styles), films (through the 20th century), and other great works by the most famous creators of each major stage in modern German cultural history. It is scheduled for publication with Routledge.
Another interdisciplinary project, Modern History of Computing and Its Cultures co-authored with George Thiruvathukal, surveys the stages of computing history with critical historiographical methods and explores the relationships between these developments and their social and cultural contexts.
.