Andrei Markovits

Andrei Markovits is currently the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author and editor of many books, scholarly articles, conference papers, book reviews and newspaper contributions in English and many foreign languages on topics as varied as German and Austrian politics, anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, social democracy, social movements, the European right and the European left. Markovits has also worked extensively on comparative sports culture in Europe and North America.

Biography

Early years

Andy Markovits was born in October 1948 in the west Romanian town of Timisoara. He was raised as the single child of a middle class Jewish family, speaking German and Hungarian at home. In school he learned Romanian, and from his early childhood he was tutored in English—later in French as well. Thus, his multilingual identity dates back to his childhood as well as the polyglot part of the world where he grew up. At the age of nine, he and his father emigrated from Romania, first to Vienna and then to New York, the two cities that would play the most important roles in his upbringing. Between 1959 and 1967, he spent the school year—September through June—in Vienna; and the summer months in New York.

University and Post Doctoral Education

After being graduated from Vienna's prestigious Theresianische Akademie with a Matura degree (the Austrian equivalent of the German Abitur), Markovits enrolled at Columbia University in New York City where he completed all of his post-secondary education, acquiring five degrees in the process. He studied political science, economics, sociology, and business administration. After receiving his doctorate in political science in 1976, he went to the Center for European Studies at Harvard University of which he would remain an active member and a Research Associate until June 30, 1999.

Institutional Affiliations

At the Harvard Center, Markovits chaired for many years the study group on German Politics as well as one entitled "The Jews in Modern Europe." He founded the quarterly journal German Politics and Society in 1983 which in the meantime has become the foremost scholarly journal on modern German politics in the United States. He participated in many of the Center's activities and became one of that institution's mainstays over the years. In turn, the Center's uniquely rich intellectual atmosphere and immensely creative interdisciplinarity have had a major hand in forming Markovits's scholarly life.

Between 1977 and 1983, Markovits was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Thereafter, he joined the faculty at Boston University where he was Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science from 1983 until 1992. He then became Professor in the Department of Politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz which he chaired until 1995 and where he remained until joining the faculty at the University of Michigan on September 1, 1999. Markovits has been awarded many fellowships, scholarships and research grants. During the academic year of 2002/2003, Markovits was Visiting Professor of Social Studies at Harvard University.

He has held academic appointments at a number of universities overseas. Among them have been Dortmund University, Osnabrueck University and Bochum University in Germany; Innsbruck University in Austria where he was a Fulbright Professor in the Department of Political Science; St. Gallen University in Switzerland; and The Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University in Israel. He spent the academic year 1998/99 as a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin—Institute for Advanced Study Berlin.

In June 2008, Markovits served as the Dr. Elizabeth Ortner-Chopin Visiting Professor at Webster University in Vienna, Austria.

From 2008-2009 Markovits was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University.

Areas of Research and Publication

A specialist on the politics of Western and Central Europe—Germany and Austria in particular—Markovits has published nineteen authored and co-authored books as well as edited and co-edited volumes; well over 100 scholarly articles; more than 50 review essays; and many articles and interviews in the American and European press. Markovits's research interests and areas of publication include: German and European labor; German and European social democracy, as well as social movements; German-Jewish relations; Germany's role in the new Europe; Anti-Americanism in Europe; the comparative sociology of modern sports cultures and – most recently – the new dimensions of the human-animal bond, particularly its deeply feminized features. His publications have appeared in English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch, Swedish, Hungarian, Hebrew, Chinese, and Persian.

Most recently, Markovits has commenced a research project on the massively changed relationship between humans and pets, dogs in particular, that has emerged in the wake of the "greening" discourse of public life in all advanced industrial societies. In particular, Markovits focuses on the featured role of women as agents of this changed discourse.

Teaching career

Markovits has won a number of teaching awards at the institutions with which he was affiliated during his academic career. At the University of California, Santa Cruz, he was awarded the "Excellence in Teaching Award" in 1997, distinguishing him as the best teacher on campus that year. At the University of Michigan, he was bestowed the Tronstein Award in 2007 for being the best teacher in the Department of Political Science and the Golden Apple Award for being the best instructor on the University of Michigan's Ann Arbor campus.

On March 15, 2009, Markovits received the coveted Arthur F. Thurnau professorship from the University of Michigan. Supported for by the Thurnau Charitable Trust, the Thurnau Professorship is annually bestowed upon five or six tenured faculty from the University of Michigan in recognition of commitment to and investment in undergraduate teaching which has had a significant impact on the intellectual development of their students.

Markovits has advised doctoral dissertations at many major American universities, as well as universities in Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Holland, Switzerland, Canada and Israel. On July 4, 2007, Markovits was awarded a Dr. Phil. honoris causa—an honorary doctorate—by the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Leuphana University Lueneburg in Lueneburg, Germany.

Personal life

Markovits loves all sports with a clear preference for the team sports of basketball, baseball, football as well as soccer. He also enjoys all kinds of music with a special penchant for Mozart, Beethoven, Dvorak and the Grateful Dead whom—in his youth and on rare occasions—he would follow on tour on both coasts of the United States. In addition to being a DEADHEAD, Markovits greatly enjoys the company of golden retrievers who have been his constant companions for three decades. He lives with his wife Kiki in Ann Arbor, MI.

Current work

Anti-Americanism

Currently, Markovits’s academic work comprises three areas of research: First and foremost, he has published a book on anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism in Europe. Entitled “Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America” and published by Princeton University Press, this work analyzes resentment towards things American in seven European countries. Going well beyond the conventional realm of politics, Markovits demonstrates that such resentment pervades quotidian culture and discourse.

Sports Culture

Second, Markovits continues his work on sports. In particular, he has expanded his analyses of how gender construes hegemonic sports culture from his earlier work at the University of Michigan to comprise other institutions of the Big Ten Conference.

Animal Research

Third, Markovits has just embarked on an analysis as to how the discourse towards animals, dogs in particular, has massively changed in the advanced industrial world over the past 20 – 30 years. In particular, he hopes to ascertain why key aspects of this changed discourse and its accompanying behavior have featured women as their most dynamic and central agents. Centering his work on a major survey of canine rescue organizations in Michigan, Markovits hopes to expand this project to Massachusetts (the Union’s most Democratic state) and Utah (its most Republican) in order to see how politics conventionally understood might – or might not – play a role in the altered nature of how humans relate to animals, specifically dogs. Once the research in the United States will be completed, Markovits has plans to place the American case into a comparative framework by analyzing parallel developments in Great Britain and Germany.

Notable Publications

German Politics

• From Bundesrepublik to Deutschland: German Politics after Unification
• German Politics and Society
• The German Left: Red, Green, and Beyond
• The German Predicament: Memory & Power in the New Europe
• The Politics of the West German Trade Unions: Strategies of class and interest representation in growth and crisis

Anti-Americanism

• Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America
• Amerika, dich haßt sich's besser

Sport

• Offside: Soccer & American Exceptionalism (with Steven L. Hellerman)
• SPORTS CULTURE AMONG UNDERGRADUATES: A STUDY OF STUDENT-ATHLETES AND STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
• Gaming the World: How Sports are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture (with Lars Rensmann)

External links

• Andrei Markovits
• Andrei Markovits U of Michigan homepage