Helmut Walser Smith is Martha Rivers Ingram Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 1870-1914 (Princeton, 1995), The Butcher’s Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town (W.W. Norton, 2002), and The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion and Race across the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge UP, 2008).

He is also the editor or co-editor of four volumes, including, most recently, The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (Oxford UP, 2012). Currently, he is working on a book, forthcoming with W.W. Norton and C.H. Beck, on conceptions of the German Nation, before, during, and after nationalism, 1500-2000.