History Department Faculty
Devin Pendas
Professor, Professor of Law (by courtesy)
Devin Pendas
Ph.D.
Contact
Stokes Hall S341
Telephone: 617-552-6881
Email: devin.pendas.1@bc.edu
Education
- B.A., Carleton College
- M.A., University of Chicago
- Diplôme élémentaire, Institut Catholique de Paris
- Ph.D., University of Chicago
Research Interests
German history; modern Europe; legal history; history of mass violence and war
Department
Biography
Professor Pendas' teaching interests include courses on German history, European legal history, the history of war and genocide, the history of war crimes trials, and the history of human rights. His research focuses on efforts to curb and punish mass political violence, including the history of human rights, war crimes trials, and the international law of armed conflict.
Professor Pendas is a faculty affiliate and co-chair of the Contemporary Europe Study Group at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. He has received research fellowships from the German Academic Exchange Service, the MacArthur Foundation through the Center for the Study of International Peace and Cooperation, the Center for Contemporary Historical Research in Potsdam, Germany, the U.S. Holocaust Museum, and the American Council of Learned Societies (Burkhardt Fellowship). He has been a guest professor at Meiji University in Tokyo and the J.W. Goethe University in Frankfurt.
REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS
Books
The Cambridge History of the Holocaust, vol. 4, Aftermath, Outcomes, Repercussions, co-edited with Laura Jockusch (Cambridge University Press, 2025)
Democracy, Nazi Trials and Transitional Justice in Germany, 1945-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
Beyond the Racial State: New Perspectives on Nazi Germany, co-edited with Mark Roseman and Richard Wetzel (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Political Trials in Theory and History, co-edited with Jens Meierhenrich (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, 1963-1965: Genocide, History and the Limits of the Law (Cambridge University Press, 2006). German translation 2013.
Selected Articles and Book Chapters
“‘Final Solution,’ Holocaust, Shoah, or Genocide: From Separate to Integrated Histories” in Hilary Earl and Simone Gigliotti eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Holocaust (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020): 21-44.
“Criminals, Enemies, and the Politics of Transitional Justice” in Austin Sarat et. al. eds., Criminals and Enemies (University of Massachusetts Press, 2019): 22-43.
“War Crimes Trials in Theory and Practice from the Middle Ages to the Present” in Jonathan Waterlow and Jacques Schumacher eds. War Crimes Trials and Investigations: A Multidisciplinary Introduction (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2018): 23-58.
“Against War: Pacifism as Collaboration and as Resistance,” in Michael Geyer and Adam Tooze eds., The Cambridge History of the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015): 475-501.
“Auschwitz Trials: The Jewish Dimension,” with Laura Jockusch and Gabriel Finder, Yad Vashem Studies 41/2 (2013): 139-171.
“Anatomie eines Skandals: die Ermittlungen im Mordfall Dr. Hans Hannemann im Kontext der deutschen Nachkriegsjustiz,” Kritische Justiz 46/3 (2013): 245-56.
“Toward a New Politics? On the Recent Historiography of Human Rights” Contemporary European History 21/1 (2012): 95-111.
“Retroactive Law and Proactive Justice: Debating Crimes against Humanity in Germany, 1945-1950” Central European History 43 (September 2010): 428-63.
“Auf dem Weg zu einem globalen Rechtssystem? Die Menschenrechte und das Scheitern des legalistischen Paradigmas des Krieges” in Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann ed., Moralpolitik. Geschichte der Menschenrechte im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2010), 226-55.
“Seeking Justice, Finding Law: Nazi Trials in the Postwar Era, 1945-1989” in The Journal of Modern History 81 (June 2009): 347-368.
“Explaining Nazism: Ethics, Beliefs, and Interests” in Modern Intellectual History 5 (November 2008): 573-96.
“Testimony” in Benjamin Ziemann and Miriam Dobson eds., Reading Primary Sources (London: Routledge, 2008): 226-42. Second, revised edition, 2020.
“Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt in Frankfurt: The Eichmann Trial, the Auschwitz Trial and the Banality of Justice,” New German Critique 34 (Winter 2007): 77-109.
“‘The Magical Scent of the Savage’: Colonial Violence, the Crisis of Civilization and the Origins of the Legalist Paradigm of War,” The Boston College International and Comparative Law Review 30 (Winter 2007): 29-53.