Degree:
Ph.D., University of Chicago

Biography:

Derek Hastings is a historian of modern Europe, with a particular emphasis on the social and cultural history of Germany in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His first book, Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism (Oxford, 2010), explored the changing religious identity of the early Nazi movement between its founding in 1919 and the mid-1920s. His current book project examines the life and career of Ernst Röhm, the head of the Nazi SA, as a prism through which to assess the conflicted and contradictory nature of Nazi conceptions of masculinity.

Professor Hastings teaches advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on European nationalism, modern Germany, and the Nazi regime, and he particularly enjoys teaching the department's undergraduate capstone seminar each semester. He is also an avid sports fan and enthusiastic season-ticket holder for OU men's and women's basketball.

Publications:

Book

Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism: Religious Identity and National Socialism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010; paperback 2011).

Articles

"Positive Christianity in a Catholic Context: Religion and the Early Nazi Movement" in Catholics, Protestants, and Nazis: A Reader, ed. Mark Edward Ruff (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming).

"Fears of a Feminized Church: Catholicism, Clerical Celibacy, and the Crisis of Masculinity in Wilhelmine Germany," European History Quarterly 38:1 (2008): 34-65.

"How 'Catholic' Was the Early Nazi Movement? Religion, Race, and Culture in Munich, 1919-1924," Central European History 36:3 (Fall 2003): 383-433.

Other

Primary Source Documents in Western Civilization, co-edited with Jonathan S. Perry and Sara Chapman (Pearson-Prentice Hall, 2009).

Book reviews published in the Journal of Modern History, The German Quarterly, Social History, Journal of Contemporary History, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, German History, Journal of Religion, and German Studies Review.

Work in Progress

Paradoxical Paragon: Ernst Röhm and the Contradictions of Nazi Masculinity (book manuscript, research underway).