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Dr Todd Weir

BA (Brown), MA (Humboldt) MPhil, PhD (Columbia)

Lecturer in Modern European History 

Modern History exams officer, Level 2 (S1); Joint Pathway Co-ordinator - History and International Studies (S1)

On Leave, Semester 2, 2012-13

Tel: +44 (0) 28 9097 3312
E-mail: t.weir@qub.ac.uk

Office: 17UQ.102

Todd Weir had been an undergraduate student of the developing world until a semester spent at an East German university in 1988 turned his interest towards Germany and the history of socialism. He later retrained as a historian, first at the Humboldt University in Berlin and then at Columbia University in New York, where he completed his PhD in 2005.  Dr Weir taught at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Seattle University and the University of Washington before joining Queen's University in January 2007. 

Research Interests

Dr Weir’s research focuses on the relationships between religious dissent, anticlericalism, popular science and radical politics both in Germany and internationally.  He has written a monograph on organized secularism nineteenth century Berlin and headed up an international collaborative investigation into naturalistic monism as a key modern worldview.  Currently, Dr Weir is investigating the relationship of secularism and socialism in the early twentieth century, a project that includes a reconsideration of the role of religious-secular struggles in the latent civil war conditions of the later Weimar Republic.  He has also published on East German collectivisation in the 1950s and the relationship of German socialism to colonialism prior to the First World War.  

Dr Weir has been a resident scholar at the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, the Simpson Center for the Humanities of the University of Washington and, most recently, the Historisches Kolleg in Munich.  His research has also been supported by grants from the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the German Academic Exchange Service.

Select Publications

Books:

Edited volume: Monism: Science, Philosophy, Religion, and the History of a Worldview.  Palgrave Series in Intellectual and Cultural History (Palgrave: New York, 2012). Click here to view book description

Monograph: Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Fourth Confession (New York, Cambridge Univeristy Press, forthcoming)

Articles and chapters:

  • "The Specter of 'Godless Jewry' Secularism and the 'Jewish Question' in Late Nineteenth Century Germany" in Central European History (2013)
  • "The Riddles of Monism: An Introductory Essay," in: Monism: Scence, Philosophy, Religion, and the History of a Worldview, ed, Todd Weir (New York, 2012), 1-44.  Click here to viewbook description
  • "Between Colonial Violence and Socialist Worldview: The Conversions of Ernst Däumig" in German History 28 (2010): 143-166. Click here to view article in online Oxford Journals
  • "The Secular Beyond: Free Religious Dissent and Debates over the Afterlife in Nineteenth-Century Germany" in Church History (2008)  Click here to view article in online Cambridge Journals.
  • '"Keine Lücke mehr im Menschen, worin das Jenseits sich einnisten könnte": Naturwissenschaft und Dissidenz in der frühen freireligiösen Bewegung' in Lucian Hölscher (ed.), Das Jenseits. Facetten eines religiösen Begriffs in der Neuzeit (Göttingen, 2007).
  • 'Towards a history and sociology of atheist religious community: the Berlin Free Religious Congregation 1845–1921' in Lucian Hölscher and Michael Geyer (eds), Die Gegenwart Gottes in der Modernen Gesellschaft(Göttingen, 2006).
  • '"Von Schwindel Befallen’ – Enthusiasmus, Inszenierung und Chaos im stalinistischen Aufbau am Beispiel der Kollektivierung der DDR-Landwirtschaft 1952–3' in Arpad von Klimo and Malte Rolf (eds) Rausch und Diktatur (Frankfurt, 2006).
  • 'The secularization of religious dissent: anticlerical politics and the Freigeistige Movement in Germany 1844–1933' in Manuel Franzmann, Christel Gärtner and Nicole Köck (eds), Religiosität in der säkularisierten Welt (Wiesbaden, 2006).
  • 'Der Rausch im Plan: Ursachen und Folgen der Inszenierung von "Klassenkampf" in der Kollektivierung der DDR-Landwirtschaft 1952–1953' in Deutschland Archiv, ii (2004).

Conferences Convened 

Dr Weir convened a Wiles Colloquium on October 2 and 3, 2009 at Queen's University. For more information, please go to our Wiles Colloquia section in News and Events: "The Monist Century 1845-1945: Science, Secularism and Worldview".

In 2008 Dr Weir initiated a university-wide programme of public lectures, films and an exhibit to mark the 40th anniversary of the epoch-making events of 1968: Turning Point 1968: A Year of Change from Belfast to Beijing .

Teaching

Dr Todd Weir is happy to direct postgraduate dissertations on topics in the history of religious conflict, secularism, popular science and scientific worldviews, modern German political and cultural movements, East Germany, as well as on aspects of the social movements of the 1960s. 

He teaches on the following undergraduate modules:

Undergraduate

HIS3110     

Religion, Secularization and Conflict in Modern Europe
(E) HIS2060

 Twentieth Century German History
HIS3038

 Socialism, the history of the idea
HIS1003

 1968 A Turning Point in Global History