Johann Chapoutot
Johann Chapoutot is Professor of Contemporary History at Sorbonne University. A specialist in the history of Nazism, Germany and Western modernity, he is the author of ten books, translated into fifteen languages and awarded ten national and foreign prizes.
An alumnus of the ENS (1998), agrégé d'histoire (2001), and a graduate of the IEP de Paris (2002), he holds doctorates from the universities of Paris-I and TU Berlin (2006), is habilitated to direct research (Paris-I, 2013), and is an honorary member of the IUF (2011-2016). He was lecturer at Grenoble Alpes University (2008-2014), then professor at Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris-III, 2014-2016) before being elected to Paris-Sorbonne (now Sorbonne Université, 2016).
His research focuses on Western modernity in the German context. A doctoral thesis and an HDR enabled him to explore the Nazi relationship to time(Le Nazisme et l'Antiquité, Paris, PUF, 2008, reed. 2012, translated into six languages), then Nazi normative culture(La Loi du sang, Paris, Gallimard, 2014, reed. 2020, translated into seven languages ; La Révolution culturelle nazie, Paris, Gallimard, 2017, reed. 2022, translated into five languages).
Subsequent works have enabled him to explore the post-1945 period(Libres d'obéir. Le management, du nazisme à aujourd'hui, Paris, Gallimard, 2020, translated into ten languages) as well as the pre-1914 period (project in progress). In two books published in 2021(Le Grand Récit, Paris, PUF, 2021, translated into two languages ; Les 100 mots de l'histoire, Paris, PUF, Que sais-je ?, 2021, translated into one foreign language), he explores the historiographical and epistemological issues involved in writing contemporary history, particularly in the cultural history of politics.
Alongside some two hundred publications in his own name, he has directed theHistoire de la France contemporaine, published by Editions du Seuil between 2012 and 2023, a fifteen year project involving eleven authors.
