David B. Dennis is a Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago where he teaches courses on Western Humanities, Modern European Cultural and Intellectual History, and the Cultural History of Computing. Having studied with scholars such as George Mosse, Harvey Goldberg, Robert Wohl, Eugen Weber, Saul Friedlaender, Robert Winter, Glenn Stanley, and others, Dennis's own scholarship has focused on cultural and political history. His Beethoven in German Politics, 1870-1989 (Yale University Press, 1996) examines 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, and other publications. Dennis's most recent book, Inhumanities: Nazi Interpretations of Western Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2012), provides an intense and comprehensive examination of the main publication of the Nazi Party, the Voelkischer 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. It has received very positive critical attention from the Times Literary Supplement, the Literary Review, the American Historical Review, European History Quarterly, and other press and media outlets. He has written numerous book chapters and articles appearing in a variety of journals including the International Journal of Humanities, the German Studies Review, the American Historical Review, and the Journal of Political and Military Sociology. His current interdisciplinary project, The History of Computing and Its Cultures, co-authored with George Thiruvathukal, Department of Computer Science, Loyola University Chicago, surveys the stages of computing history using critical historiographical methods to explore the relationships between these developments and their social and cultural contexts. It is scheduled for publication with Taylor & Francis in 2019. Dennis has been recognized for excellence in teaching and was a recipient of a Master Teacher Award in the College of Arts and Sciences in both 2000 and 2003, and the Provost's Award for Excellence in Teaching Freshmen in 2015. In 2010, he organized and moderated the film series, Made in West/East Germany: Chicago-wide Commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of German Reunification in conjunction with the Goethe-Institute Chicago, DePaul University, Northwestern Univerrsity, and the University of Illinois-Chicago. In 1993, he hosted the Topography of Terror: Gestapo, SS, and Reichssicherheitshauptamt on the Prinz-Albrecht Terrain Exhibit at Loyola University, in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Chicago and the German Consulate in Chicago. Dennis also served as the Graduate Program Director in the History Department from 2011-2014.
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New Directions in the Humanities
