About

Paul Frederick Lerner

Associate Professor of History

Contact Information
E-mail: plerner@usc.edu
Phone: (213) 740-1653
Office: SOS 276

 

Education
B.A. History, University of Chicago, 6/1988
Ph.D. History, Columbia University, 5/1996
 

Postdoctoral Training
Post-doctoral Fellow, Georgetown University, BMW Center for German and European Studies, 2000-2001   
Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine (London, UK), 03/01/1996-08/01/1997  
 

Description of Research

Summary Statement of Research Interests
Professor Lerner is a historian of nineteenth and twentieth-century Germany and Central Europe. He has written on the history of psychiatry, specifically on hysteria and trauma in the years around World War I in Germany, and he is now working on the reception and representation of department stores and modern forms of marketing and consumption in Germany and Central Europe. This project pays particular attention to the notion of the "Jewish department store" and the ways that various movements deployed images of Jews to critique excessive consumption or mass consumer society. Lerner is also part of a long-term project on gender in German Jewish history and is co-editing a volume of essays entitled: "Jewish Masculinities: German Jews, Gender and History." Lerner's books can be found at: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=3972 and http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521583659
 

Publications

Book
Lerner, P. F., Baader, B. M., Gillerman, S. (2009). Jewish Masculinities: German Jews, Gender and History. (Lerner, Paul F., Ed.).
Lerner, P. F. (2003). Hysterical Men: War, Psychiatry and the Politics of Trauma in Germany, 1890-1939 (Cornell University Press, 2003). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Lerner, P. F., Micale, M. S. (2001). Traumatic Pasts: History, Psychiatry and Trauma in the Modern Age, 1870-1930. Cambridge University Press.
 

Journal Article
Lerner, P. F. (2009). An All Consuming History: New Works on Consumption in 20th Century Germany. Central European History/Cambridge University Press. Vol. 42 (3), pp. 509-543.
Lerner, P. F. (2006). Consuming Pathologies: Kleptomania, Magazinitis, and the Problem of Female Consumption in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany. WerkstattGeschichte/Klartext Verlag. Vol. 46-56
 

Other
Lerner, P. F. (2009). Cultural Studies Meets Jewish Studies: New Approaches to the German Jewish Past: An Introduction. Journal of Modern Jewish Studies.
 

Honors and Awards
Charles W. and Sally Rothfield Fellowship at Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Fall 2008   
Alexander von Humbolt Fellowship Recipient, Research Fellowship, held at the University of Potsdam, 2005-2006  
USC Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award, 2005  
USC, General Education Teaching Award, 2001-2002  
Post-doctoral Fellowship, Georgetown University , BMW Center for German and European Studies, 2000-2001  
USC Zumberge Research and Innovation Fund Award, 1999-2000  
Post-doctoral Fellowship, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London, 1996-1997  
 

Service to the Profession

Editorships and Editorial Boards
Editorial Board Member, Cornell Studies in the History of Psychiatry (Series), 2004-  
 

Other Service to the Profession
Member of Steering Committee on Gender in German-Jewish History. Plans conferences on topics in Jewish history and gender studies, 07/01/2005-  
Southern California German Studies Workshop. Founder and Director. An interdisciplinary group of scholars on German studies in the Southern California area. We meet regularly to read and discuss each other's works in progress., 09/01/1999-  
 
Faculty may update their profile by visiting https://myusccollege.usc.edu.