Professional and Biographical Information

Catherine Epstein is Provost and Dean of the Faculty and  Henry Steele Commager Professor of History at Amherst College. She specializes in Modern German and Central European History. Since coming to Amherst in 2000, she has taught a wide range of European history classes, including courses on the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, and World War II. Epstein is the author of four books on German history. Her textbook, Nazi Germany: Confronting the Myths, was published in 2015 (Wiley-Blackwell). Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Nazi Occupation of Western Poland (Oxford, 2010) won the Arthur Kronthal Prize. Epstein also wrote The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and their Century (Harvard, 2003) and A Past Renewed: German-speaking Refugee Historians in the United States after 1933 (Cambridge, 1993). For a decade (2004-2014), Epstein served as Associate Editor of Central European History, the leading journal in German history in North America. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Friends of the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC and on the Board of Directors of the American Friends of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She is also a member of the Academic Committee of the US Holocaust Memorial Council. Epstein has been Dean of the Faculty since July 2014, and Provost and Dean of the Faculty since 2019.

BOOK PUBLICATIONS:

Nazi Germany: Confronting the Myths. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015

Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and Their Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

A Past Renewed: German-Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States After 1933. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

DEGREES:

Ph.D., Harvard University, 1998.

M.Sc., London School of Economics, 1987.

A.B. Brown University, 1985.