Christian Bailey
Assistant Professor of History
Christian Bailey is assistant professor of history and a contributing member of the gender studies faculty. Most of his courses explore modern European history, although often from a global perspective.
His current research focuses on a relatively new field: the history of emotions. As a contribution to this field, he has written a book on love within German Jewish communities (German Jews in Love: A History, Stanford University Press, 2022). The book starts in the 1870s, when marriages between Jews and Christians were first permitted, and ends a century later, in the aftermath of the sexual revolution. He argues that by exploring people’s most intimate experiences we learn how cultural and political norms became a reality in people’s everyday lives. By studying sources such as diaries, love letters, and court reports, we can also understand how individuals unwittingly provoked cultural, social, and ultimately political change by such simple acts as falling in love.
His first book, Between Yesterday and Tomorrow: German Visions of Europe, 1926–1950 (2013, paperback 2016) focused on German ideas for integrating Europe in the mid-20th century.
More About Me
Bailey completed his PhD at Yale University before moving on to the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, where he was a postdoctoral researcher. He is currently reviews editor at Contemporary European History
In Bailey’s classes, students examine Europe from a global viewpoint and consider compelling new historical interpretations. Bailey is particularly interested in understanding Europe from the often neglected viewpoint of outsiders: the minorities, the colonized, and the immigrants.
Publications
Civilizing Emotions: Concepts in Nineteenth Century Asia and Europe, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)
Europe Transformed, 1968-1989, (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 2014)
Emotional Lexicons: Continuity and Change in the Vocabulary of Feeling, 1700-2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Appeared in German as Gefühlswissen: Eine lexicalische Spurensuche in der Moderne, (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 2011)
Articles
”Nächstenliebe in the Age of Nationalism: Reclaiming a Jewish Emotion between the Fin-de-Siecle and the First World War,” The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 66, (2021)
“Socialist Visions of Europe in Germany: A Case of Ostpolitik since the 1920s?” Contemporary European History. 26.2 (2017)
“Honor among Peers? A Comparative History of Honor Practices in Post-War Britain and West Germany.” The Journal of Modern History. 87.4 (2015): 809-851