Sace E. Elder

INTRODUCTION

Education & Training

B.A., History, University of Memphis

M.A., History, University of Memphis

Ph. D., Modern European History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Conference Presentations

• Roundtable presentation, "Is It Terminal? Revisiting the History Master's Degree," American Historical Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, January, 2024.
• Roundtable presentation, "Is It Terminal? Revisiting the History Master's Degree," European History Section of the Southern Historical Association Conference, Baltimore, MD, November, 2022.
• "A Usable Past?: The Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany in Contemporary American Media Culture," European Section of the Southern History Association Conference, Louisville, KY, November, 2019. 
• “The Wicked Stepmother in the Age of Maternalist Politics,” German Studies Association Annual Meeting, Portland, Oregon, 3-6 October, 2019. 
• with Monica Burney and Danielle Beamon, “Roleplaying Games and the Inclusive Classroom,” MEI Rise Conference, Eastern Illinois University, February 13, 2017 
• "A Just Measure of Pain: Corporal Punishment, Children’s Subjectivity, and the Limits of Acceptable Violence in Imperial and Weimar Germany," Zucht und Ordnung. Gewalt gegen Kinder in historischer Perspective, Akademie für politische Bildung, Tutzing, Germany, 13-15 November 2015.
•  “Talking about justice, building a culture of inclusion,” National Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 14, 2014 
• “Identifying the Victim: The Criminalization of Child Abuse in Germany,” invited paper, “Crime as Construction,” Cultural History of Crime project, Nyborg on Funen, Denmark, October 8-9, 2015
• “De-privatization of violence? Corporal Punishment in Weimar Germany,” German Studies Association Conference, Milkwaukee, WI, 4-7 October 2012
• “Crime Against the Child: The Criminalization of Physical Abuse in Wilhelmine Germany,”  “Crime and Punishment in Modern Europe,” a conference held at the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C., 10-11 March 2011

Publications

• Murder Scenes: Normality, Deviance, and Criminal Violence in Weimar Berlin, Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany  (The University of Michigan Press, 2010).
• (with Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz) "Redesigning for Justice: Rethinking Our Curriculum and Enlarging the Purposes of History Education," Journal of American History 110, no. 4 (March 2024): 718-728.

• “The Wicked Stepmother in the Age of Maternalist Politics,” in Mothers Who Kill/Infanticide, eds. Charlotte Beyer and Josephine Savarese (Demeter Press, Februrary 2022). 

• "Ein gerechtes Maß an Schmerz. Körperliche Züchtigung, die Subjektivität von Kindern und die Grenzen vertretbarer Gewalt im Kaiserreich und der Weimarer Republik." Translated by Carina Schumann. In Zucht und Ordnung. Gewalt gegen Kinder in historischer Perspektive, Markus Raasch and Stefan Grüner, eds. Duckner & Homblot (forthcoming, 2019)

•  “A Right to Beat a Child? Corporal Punishment and the Law in Wilhelmine Germany” Central European History 47, no. 1 (March 2014): 54-75.

• “’Prostitutes, Respectable Women, and Women from Outside:’ The Carl Grossmann Sexual Murder Case in Postwar Berlin,” in Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern Germany, ed. Richard Wetzell, (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2014).

• “Murder, Denunciation, and Criminal Policing in Weimar Berlin,” Journal of Contemporary History 41, no. 3 (July 2006): 401-419.
•  “Das Gewissen von Moabit” [“Highlight” article about 1920s courtroom reporter Sling (Paul Schlesinger)], MESSAGE - internationale Fachzeitschrift für Journalismus no. 1 (2004). Translated from English by Susanne Hold. 

Frequently Taught Courses

• HIS 5720: First World War Graduate Seminar
• History and Memory in the New Germany (Study Abroad in Berlin and Munich)
• HIS 5430: Readings in Modern German History
• HIS 5001: Introduction to Graduate Historical Studies
• HIS 4845: Women and Gender in Modern Europe (cross-listed with Women's Studies)
• HIS 4775: The Nazi Past in German Film
• HIS 4375: History Capstone
• HIS 3450: Modern Germany
• HIS 3555: Modern World History
• HIS 3415: World War I
• HIS 2500: Historical Research and Writing
• WST 2309G: Women, Men, and Culture
• HIS 1521G/HIS 1597G: Human Rights in History
• HIS 1101: Introduction to Historical Studies

Research & Creative Interests

My research focuses on the social and cultural history of violence and crime in late nineteenth and twentieth-century Germany. My current book project deals with the campaign against cruelty to children in Germany from the Wilhelmine to the Nazi periods. I am particularly interested in the ways in which child protectionists renegotiated the limits of acceptable violence (physische Gewalt) in German society, as well as challenged the legal and cultural terms of parental authority (elterliche Gewalt). This research has developed out of my first book project, Murder Scenes: Normality, Deviance, and Criminal Violence in Weimar Berlin (The University of Michigan Press, June 2010), which examines the role of murder in Weimar diagnoses of social crisis and urban modernity and demonstrates the interaction of the press, the police, and ordinary Berliners in creating a public culture of policing and surveillance. And I am preparing a role playing game for the Reacting to the Past Consortium about the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Office Hours

MW 3-4:30 (in person and online); T 4-5 (online only)