Helmut Walser Smith is the Martha Rivers Ingram Professor of History at Vanderbilt University and the Director of the of the Robert Penn Warren Center of the Humanities. The author of German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 1870-1914 (Princeton, 1995), he is also the editor of Protestants, Catholics and Jews in Germany, 1800-1914 (Oxford, 2001) and The Holocaust and other Genocides: History, Representation, Ethics (Nashville, 2002). With Werner Bergmann and Christhard Hoffmann, he edited Exclusionary Violence: Antisemitic Riots in Modern German History (Ann Arbor, 2002). His book, The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town (New York, 2002), received the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History. It was also named an L.A. Times Non-Fiction Book of the Year, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, and it was listed by Damals, a popular history magazine in Germany, as one of the three most innovative works of history in 2002. The Butcher's Tale has been translated into German, French and Dutch. His most recent book, The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race across the Long Nineteenth Century, appeared in 2008 with Cambridge University Press. He is also the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Modern German History, which is scheduled for publication in 2009. Finally, he is at work on a large  book called Germany: The Discovery and Experience of a Nation, which will appear with W.W. Norton. At Vanderbilt, he teaches a wide variety of classes including Western Civilization, a history workshop, and a large introductory class on the Holocaust; he is also the recipient of the Jeffrey Nordhaus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

Helmut lives in Nashville with his wife, Meike G. Werner, and their son Luca.