Ernest Benz
Associate Professor

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Office: Pierce Hall 302

Phone: 585-3716

Ernest Benz is an associate professor specializing in modern Eurpoean social history. His book Fertility, Wealth, and Politics in Three Southwest German Villages 1650–1900 analyses the onset of family limitation on the right bank of the Rhine river, the earliest documented practice of contraception among Germans. Related topics include migration, marriage, mortality, illegitimacy, inheritance, occupation, landholding, industrialization, and women's work. He is currently researching the family histories of rural and urban Jews in Baden from 1800 until the Holocaust. His other specific interests include the revolution of 1848 at the local level and struggles between State and Church, but he is willing to listen and discuss almost any subject.

Professor Benz's teaching duties include three sequential surveys together covering Europe since 1618, focused courses on the French Revolution and on grass–roots social history, colloquia in modern intellectual history, and occasionally a seminar on the history of fertility control.