Director, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology / Elizabeth L. Eisenstein Collegiate Professor of History and Germanic Languages
About
Helmut Puff grew up in a part of the world whose landscape, agriculture, and culture were profoundly shaped by the Roman Empire. From early on he developed a passion about connecting the distant past with the present through the study of objects and doing historical work. This is why he embarked on a museum career before going into academia. His teaching and research focus on central European literature, history, and culture in premodern times. He specializes in the history of sexuality, media history, the history of reading, and the history of time and temporality. Helmut Puff has researched modes of seeing in early modern Europe. His interest in the intersections between textuality, visuality, and spatiality has led him to research the changing representations of ruins as well as the history of three-dimensional city models since the Renaissance. His most recent book publication explores a history of waiting through the spaces where people waited. He also co-curated exhibitions such as Reforming the Word: Martin Luther in Context and (with students) Openings: Title Pages in the History of Printed Books.
Together with Libby Otto (University of Buffalo), Helmut Puff now is the co-editor of a book series with University of Michigan Press, Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany (https://press.umich.edu/Series/S/Social-History-Popular-Culture-and-Politics-in-Germany). He is committed to international education and has directed a year-long study abroad program in Freiburg, Germany, several times (www.ayf.uni-freiburg.de).
Selected Publications:
Books
- (2023) The Antechamber: Toward a History of Waiting
- (2014) Miniature Monuments: Modeling German History
- (2012) After the History of Sexuality: German Genealogies with and Beyond Foucault
- (2003) Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Switzerland, 1400-1600
- (1995) Von dem schlüssel aller Künsten / nemblich der Grammatica": Deutsch im lateinischen Grammatikunterricht
Book Chapters
- (2026) Speaking (of) Furniture: The Wrangelschrank (1566)
- (2022) Architectures of Waiting: Helmut Puff and Bernardo Zacka in Conversation
- (2021) Bedenkzeit (spatium deliberationis): Timing the Reformation
- (2013) Same-Sex Possibilities, The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe
- (2012) After the History of (Male) Homosexuality, After the History of Sexuality: German Genealogies with and Beyond Foucault
- (2010) Memento Mori, Memento Mei: Albrecht Dürer and the Art of Dying, Enduring Loss in Early Modern Germany: Cross Disciplinary Perspectives
- (2010) Ruins as Models, Displaying Destruction in Postwar Germany
Affiliation(s)
- Germanic Languages and Literatures
- History
- Women’s and Gender Studies
- History of Art
Field(s) of Study
- Late Medieval and Early Modern German Literature, Culture, and History
- European Reformations
- History of Sexuality, Gender History
- Visual Culture
- History of Time
