Associate Professor Geoffrey Giles received his Ph.D. in 1975 in German history from the University of Cambridge in England, and his B.A. in 1969 in German Language and Literature from the University of London. He joined the UF Department of History in 1978 after spending four years in Yale University’s think tank, the Institution for Social and Policy Studies. His book, Students and National Socialism in Germany, was published by Princeton University Press. Recent articles include “The Denial of Homosexuality: Same-Sex Incidents in Himmler’s SS and Police,”Journal of the History of Sexuality, 11, 1/2, January/April 2002, pp. 256-290.
The following essays have appeared in books: “Blind in the Right Eye: German Justice and Holocaust Denial,” in Peter Hayes (Ed.), Lessons and Legacies III: Memory, Memorialization, and Denial (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999), pp. 248-253; “Popular Education and New Media: The Cigarette Card in Germany,” in Marc Depaepe & Bregt Henkens (Eds.), The Challenge of the Visual in the History of Education. Paedagogica Historica Supplementary Series, Volume VI: Gent, 2000, pp. 449-469; “Die erzieherische Rolle von Sammelbildern in politischen Umbruchszeiten,” in Dietrich Papenfuß & Wolfgang Schieder (Hrsg.), Deutsche Umbrüche im 20. Jahrhundert (Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau, 2000), pp. 241-265; “The Institutionalization of Homosexual Panic in the Third Reich”, in Robert Gellately and Nathan Stolzfus (Eds.), Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 2001), pp. 223-255; “Männerbund mit Homo-Panik: Die Angst der Nazis vor der Rolle der Erotik”, in Burkhard Jellonnek & Rüdiger Lautmann (Eds.),Nationalsozialistischer Terror gegen Homosexuelle: Verdrängt und ungesühnt(Schöningh: Paderborn, 2002), pp. 105-118; “Through Cigarette Cards to Manliness: Building German Character with an Informal Curriculum,” in Joyce Goodman & Jane Martin, Gender, Colonialism and Education: The Politics of Experience (London & Portland: Woburn Press, 2002), pp. 73-96; “Confirming Their Prejudices: German University Students and Himmler’s Resettlement Program,” in Larry V. Thompson (Ed.), Lessons and Legacies IV: Reflections on Religion, Justice, Sexuality, and Genocide (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2003), pp. 236-249.
Professor Giles taught annually a lecture course on the History of the Holocaust (EUH 3033). Other courses included Twentieth-Century Germany (EUH 4464), Nineteenth-Century Germany (EUH4463), Alcohol and History (HIS 4306), junior seminars on the Holocaust, and graduate seminars in German history. He also codirected an annual summer institute on the Holocaust for Florida schoolteachers.
Professor Giles served as Undergraduate Coordinator of the History Department for most of the 1980s and much of the 1990s. He won a university teaching award in 1996.
He has served as Secretary-Treasurer of the German Studies Association; President of the Alcohol and Temperance History Group; Chair of the Standing Working Group on Gender in the International Standing Conference for the History of Education; and President of the Friends of the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC.
He was the director of the Holocaust Educational Foundation’s regular study seminars in Eastern Europe, and a member of the State of Florida Education Commissioner’s Task Force on Holocaust Education.
He was editor of The Social History of Alcohol Review from 1980-85, and is or has been a member of the editorial boards of German History, German Studies Review, and Journal of the History of Sexuality.
His research has been recognized by two year-long fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and one from the German Marshall Fund. In 2000-2001 he was the senior fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. He spent the year 2003-2004 as a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Munich, completing his book manuscript on homosexuality in Nazi Germany.