Isabel Virginia Hull (born 1949) is John Stambaugh Professor Emerita of History and the former chair of the history department at

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

. She specializes in German history from 1700 to 1945, with a focus on sociopolitics, political theory, and gender/sexuality. Since January 2006, Hull has served on the editorial board of the ''

Journal of Modern History ''The Journal of Modern History'' is a quarterly Peer review, peer-reviewed academic journal covering European intellectual, political, and cultural history, published by the University of Chicago Press. Established in 1929, the journal covers even ...

''.

Education

Hull received her B.A. from the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

in 1970 and her Ph.D. from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

in 1978. She teaches courses on European

fascism Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hie ...

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, German history 1648–present, and

international law International law, also known as public international law and the law of nations, is the set of Rule of law, rules, norms, Customary law, legal customs and standards that State (polity), states and other actors feel an obligation to, and generall ...

Research

The position for which Hull is best known, embodied in her two most recent books, is that Germany before and during World War I was uniquely indifferent to international law among the great powers, and (contrary to established historiography) that its responsibility for bringing the war about was much greater than that of the Allied powers. In 2014, Hull published ''A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law During the Great War'', analyzing the Allied blockade of Germany. The book was criticized by other historians for failing "to take considerations of morality and, perhaps more importantly, legitimacy f the blockadeinto account". Michael Geyer of the University of Chicago has stated that "Isabel V. Hull is one of the most accomplished German historians and surely the best of her generation," and she has been described by

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as "one of America's leading scholars on the role of fascism in history." She is a winner of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award and the

Leo Gershoy Award The Leo Gershoy Award is a book prize awarded by the American Historical Association for the best publication in English dealing with the history of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Endowed in 1975 by the Gershoy family and first ...

(1996), is a member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

and has been a

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon individuals who have demonstrated d ...

and an Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Research Fellow. In 2013, she was awarded the inaugural International Research Support Prize by the Max Weber Stiftung and the Historisches Kolleg.

Bibliography

Books

* *''Sexuality, State, and Civil Society in Germany, 1700–1815''. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. *''Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany''. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. *''A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law During the Great War''. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014.

Book reviews

External links

Cornell History Department faculty webpage

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hull, Isabel Virginia 1949 births Living people Cornell University Department of History faculty Cornell University faculty Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Historians of Germany London Review of Books people University of Michigan alumni Yale University alumni Historians of World War I