Professor Richard J Evans
Future Rhetoric
lectures / Past
Rhetoric lectures
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Professor Richard J
Evans
Gresham Professor of Rhetoric
Professor Richard J. Evans FBA is Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge. He has lectured extensively all over the world at a variety of literary festivals and events, is widely published and is a frequent contributor to the broadcast media and the press. He has been Editor of the Journal of Contemporary History since 1998 and a judge of the Wolfson Literary Award for History since 1993. His most recent publication was the third volume of his monumental large-scale history of the Third Reich, The Third Reich at War, which was published in 2008.
Professor Evans's area of research interest lies predominantly in German history, especially social and cultural history, since the mid-nineteenth century. He has worked on movements of emancipation and liberation, including the feminist movement and the labour movement, on social inequality in the urban environment, and on the social history of death and disease. His work on the history of crime has involved examining literary discourses and their interaction with social models of deviance, both those articulated by the authorities and those lived by deviants themselves. Since acting as principal expert witness in the David Irving libel trial before the High Court in London in 2000, his work has dealt with Holocaust denial and the clash of epistemologies when history enters the courtroom.
Professor Evans' 2010/11 series of lectures is The Victorians: Culture and Experience in Britain, Europe and the World, 1815-1914. The lectures will look at the Victorians not just in Britain but in Europe and the wider world. 'Victorian' has come to stand for a particular set of values, perceptions and experiences, many of which were shared by people in a variety of different countries, from Russia to America, Spain to Scandinavia, and reflected in the literature and culture of the nineteenth century, up to the outbreak of the First World War. The focus of the lectures will be on identifying and analyzing six key areas of the Victorian experience, looking at them in international perspective. The lectures will be illustrated, and the visual material will form a key element in the presentations. Throughout the series, we will be asking how far, in an age of growing nationalism and class conflict, the experiences of the Victorian era were common to different classes and countries across Europe, and how far the political dominance of Britain, the world superpower of the day, was reflected in the spread of British culture and values to other parts of the world.
Professor Evans' 2009/10 series of lectures was War and Peace in Europe: From Napoleon to the Kaiser, which examined the origins, course and impact of six wars or international conflicts that tore Europe apart at various times during the 19th Century. The lectures reflected Professor Evans' work-in-progress on the Penguin History of Europe, 1815-1914.
Professor Evans' personal webpage can be found at www.richardjevans.com