Professor Lekan teaches undergraduate surveys of European civilization and modern Germany, specialized undergraduate courses and seminars on environmental history, the urban experience in modern Europe, and Nazi social history, and graduate seminars in environmental history, European history, and dissertation prospectus writing. His first book, Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885-1945 (Harvard University Press, 2004), explores the relationship between nature conservation, landscape planning, and national identity in the Wilhelmine, Weimar, and National Socialist periods of German history. He has also recently completed a volume of essays (co-edited with Thomas Zeller) entitled Germany’s Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History (Rutgers University Press, 2005).

Current Activities:

I have begun research and writing for a new book, tentatively titled Sublime Consumption: German Nature Tourism and the Mass Production of Landscape in the Twentieth Century, which explores the relationship between outdoor recreation, consumer culture, and environmental politics. How have the leisure industry and consumer culture shaped Germans’ vision of a “natural” landscape during the industrial and post-industrial eras? To what extent did nature tourism contribute to the rise of environmentalist movements? I am also working on a series of review essays that compare the culture and practice of European and U.S. nature conservation and regional planning between the 1890s and 1945.

To see Professor Lekan's CV, click here.