Rob Sackett, who came to UCCS in 1982, is the Modern Europeanist of the Department with particular interest in modern Germany, the Nazi period, the Holocaust, the Federal Republic. He won't hide it any longer: he loves teaching.

I love (first person, now) where film and history intersect, also where history and literature intersect. Even (or especially) a subject like the Holocaust calls for more than a conventional historical treatment, I believe?film and literature, the visual arts all add to what we know and understand. The history of ideas, also of ideas about history, is of special interest. My teaching career has been enlarged by working with tremendous colleagues from other departments in the Humanities Program. I work in a great Department. It is an honor to be with such a collection of fine people and historians. I admire and appreciate the students at UCCS. I have won teaching awards, including the 2010 campus Outstanding Teacher Award, which is a source of satisfaction. I speak German and Spanish, love both of them and am always seeking to improve in both. I have published a book and many articles on German history and literature. I have more I would like to accomplish in research and writing. As I write these lines in 2011 I am nearing the end of what seems like a long tenure as Chair of the Department. There are lots of new courses I would like to teach.

Fields: Modern Europe, Germany since the 18th Century, the Holocaust, Genocide and Oppression, History & Literature, History & Film

Research Interests: Public Discussion of Genocide and Racism in the Early Federal Republic of Germany; Responses in Contemporary Mexico to European Fascism, the Second World War, and the Nazi Genocide

B.A., Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa, 1973
A.M., Ph.D., Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, 1976; 1980

• Popular Entertainment, Class, and Politics in Munich, 1900-23, Harvard University Press, 1982.  (Japanese translation:  Shobunsha Ltd., 1987). 
• "Images of the Jew: Popular Joketelling in Munich on the Eve of World War I," Theory and Society 16 (1987): 527-563.   
• "The Local Politics of the Prussian State: Nationbuilding in Kempen of the Rhine Province, 1833-1848," Central European History 21, no. 1 (March 1988): 31-55.   
• "Die preussische Landwehr am linken Niederrhein um die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts"  Annalen des historischen Vereins fuer den Niederrhein 194 (1991): 167-188.   
• "Antimodernism in the Popular Entertainment of Modern Munich:  Attitude, Institution, Language," New German Critique 57 (Fall 1992): 123-155.   
• "Satires of War:  Two Plays by Munich's Karl Valentin 1916-1917," The Germanic Review LXIX, no. 4 (Fall 1994):  167-176.              
• "Brentano in Berlin:  The Attack on the Philistines," Oxford German Studies 24 (1995):  60-79.  
• "Germans and Guilt:  The 'Second Threshold' of Heinrich Boell: A Study of Three Non-Fictional Works,"  Modern Language Review 97, no. 2, April 2002, 336-352.  
• "Doeblin's Destiny:  The Author of Schicksalsreise as Christian, Jew and German," Neophilologus 86 (2002): 587-608.  
• "Memory By Way of Anne Frank: Enlightenment and Denial Among West Germans, Circa 1960, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 16, no. 2 (Fall 2002): 243-265.   
• "Picturing Atrocity: Holocaust Photos in West Germany in the Early 1960s", German History, 24:4 (Winter 2006): 526-561.  

Curriculum Vitae