Professor Treitel studies German-speaking Europe since 1800. She teaches courses on modern German and European history, on the world history of health and disease, and on topics in the new interdisciplinary area of Health Humanities.
Corinna Treitel is interested in the paradoxical dynamics of German modernity, where rational, irrational, liberal, and illiberal tendencies have intermingled with fascinating results for politics and culture, both in Germany and beyond. Her research has been particularly concerned with how these paradoxes have played out at the interface of science, medicine, and popular culture.
She is the author of two books: Eating Nature in Modern Germany: Food, Agriculture, and Environment, c. 1870-2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and A Science for the Soul: Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
Her current book, Gesundheit! Seeking German Health, 1750-2000, explores changing ideas and practices of health in German lands from the mid-eighteenth century to the present and tracks their global history.
Professor Treitel enjoys collaborative work. She helped introduce Medical Humanities as a field of study to Washington University in St. Louis in 2015 and continues to work with scholars around the world on Health Humanities. She also co-leads Science in the Public Square, a group studying (mis)trust in science as a recurrent social phenomenon.
Professor Treitel welcomes applications from graduate students in German and European History, as well as in the history of science and medicine.
