Catherine Epstein is Henry Steele Commager Professor of History at Amherst College. She was named Dean of the Faculty in July 2014 and Provost and Dean of the Faculty in 2019 and stepped down from those positions in July 2024. Epstein specializes in Modern German and Central European History. Since arriving at Amherst in 2000, she has taught a wide range of European history classes, including courses on the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, and World War II. Epstein is the author of four books on German history. Her textbook, Nazi Germany: Confronting the Myths, was published in 2015 (Wiley-Blackwell). Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Nazi Occupation of Western Poland (Oxford, 2010) won the Arthur Kronthal Prize. Epstein also wrote The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and their Century (Harvard, 2003) and A Past Renewed: German-Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States after 1933 (Cambridge, 1993). For a decade (2004-2014), Epstein served as Associate Editor of Central European History, the leading journal in German history in North America. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Friends of the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC and of the Academic Committee of the US Holocaust Memorial Council.
Epstein Exits: A Conversation on her Tenue as Provost and Dean of Faculty
