Neaman, Elliot Yale 1957-

views updated

Neaman, Elliot Yale 1957-

PERSONAL: Born 1957. Education: University of British Columbia, B.A., 1979; Freie Universitat Berlin, M.A., 1985; University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D., 1992.

ADDRESSES: Home—San Francisco, CA. Office—Department of History, University of San Francisco, 2130 Fulton St., San Francisco, CA 94117-1080. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER: Historian, educator, and writer. Two Cities School, Zurich, Switzerland, English teacher, beginning 1980; Academy for Foreign Languages, Berlin, Germany, English teacher, beginning 1982; University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, graduate student instructor, 1990-92; assistant professor of history, 1993-98, associate professor of history, 1999—. Also editorial assistant for Tikkun magazine, 1992.

AWARDS, HONORS: Outstanding Student Instructor, University of California, Berkeley, 1992; Distinguished Research Award, University of San Francisco, 1999.

WRITINGS

A Dubious Past: Ernst Jünger and the Politics of Literature after Nazism, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1999.

Contributor to books, including Rechtextremismus—Ideologie und Gewal, edited by Hajo Funke, Edition Hentrich (Berlin, Germany), 1995;Antisemitism and Xenophobia in Germany after Unification, edited by Rainer Erb and Werner Bergmann, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1997;Fascism’s Return: Scandal, Revision and Ideology, edited by Richard Golsan, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1998;The Encyclopedia of Historiography, edited by Daniel Woolf, Garland (New York, NY), 1998;Amerika, dich hasst sich’s besser, Die USA in Wahn und Wirklichkeit, edited by Thomas Uwer and Thomas von der Osten-Sacken, Konkret Verlag, 2003;Rhine-crossings; Berlin-Paris, edited by Aminia Brueggeman and Peter Schulman, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 2005;New History of German Literature, edited by Judith Ryan et al., Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2005;Anti-Semitism, edited by Mark McKain, Greenhaven Press (Westport, CT), 2005;Scribner’s Encyclopedia of Europe 1789-1914, Scribner (New York, NY), 2006. Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including the New York Times, Dissent, Constellations, Tikkun, New German Critique, Critical Review, Central European History, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Lingua Franca, Telos, and German Politics and Society.

SIDELIGHTS: Elliot Yale Neaman is a historian whose primary interests are European intellectual history, German conservatism and right-wing politics, and the Holocaust. In his book A Dubious Past: Ernst Jünger and the Politics of Literature after Nazism, the author explores the legacy of German intellectual Jünger, who wrote about a wide range of topics and often created controversy, especially during his early writings of intellectual fascism. Neaman examines Jünger’s published writings as well as his unpublished works, such as letters. The author also delves into interviews with Jünger and explores how Jünger’s own public career mirrored German political history. “Elliot Neaman’s book on the life and work of this controversial figure is a timely reminder of the confusion over Jünger’s place among German authors of the twentieth century, illustrated by the numerous debates over Jünger’s complicity with fascism that persisted until his death,” wrote Daniel P. Reynolds in the Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature. Referring to the book as “carefully documented and meticulously argued,” Reynolds added that the author explains why Jünger is “one of German literature’s most ambiguous figures.” In a review in German History, Geoff Eley commented that the author’s “new study provides a first-rate basis in the English language for judging the fullness of Jünger’s career.” Eley also wrote: “A Dubious Past provides a model of ambitiously conceived and carefully contextualized intellectual history, which leaves twentieth-century historians in its debt.”