Background
Isabel Hull was born on July 26, 1949, in New York, United States.
(This long-awaited work reconstructs the ways in which the...)
This long-awaited work reconstructs the ways in which the meanings and uses of sex changed during that important moment of political and social configuration viewed as the birth of modernity. Isabel V. Hull analyzes the shift in the "sexual system" which occurred in German-speaking Central Europe when the absolutist state relinquished its monopoly on public life and presided over the formation of an independent civil society. Hull defines a society's sexual system as the patterned way in which sexual behavior is shaped and given meaning through institutions. She shows that as the absolutist state encouraged an independent sphere of public activity, it gave up its theoretically unlimited right to regulate sexual behavior and invested this right in the active citizens of the new civil society. Among the questions posed by this political and social transformation are, When does sexual behavior merit society's regulation? What kinds of behaviors and groups prompt intervention? What interpretive framework does the public apply to sexual behavior? Hull persuades us that a culture's sexual system can be understood only in relation to the particularities of state, law, and society, and that when state and society are examined through the sexual lens, much conventional wisdom is cast in doubt.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801431263/?tag=2022091-20
1996
(This volume analyzes the immediate civilian and military ...)
This volume analyzes the immediate civilian and military entourage of the last German Kaiser. Its purpose is to lay bare the internal structures which combined to produce the peculiar, and ultimately fatal, decisions taken by Germany's leaders from 1888 to 1918. The declining position of the Prussian nobility and its efforts to save itself, the increasing predominance in high government of the Prussian officer corps and its rigid ethos, the inelasticity of royal bureaucracy, as well as the character of the semi-autocratic Emperor: these cultural and social structures formed an interlocking whole which determined the quality of political leadership and decision making. Isabel Hull's scholarly and carefully argued study dissects the upper level of leadership to discover the reasons behind its self-destructive response to the crisis of modern Germany. It will interest political and social historians, political scientists and sociologists and make fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in the problems of modern Germany and its influence on the destiny of Europe.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/052153321X/?tag=2022091-20
2004
(In a book that is at once a major contribution to modern ...)
In a book that is at once a major contribution to modern European history and a cautionary tale for today, Isabel V. Hull argues that the routines and practices of the Imperial German Army, unchecked by effective civilian institutions, increasingly sought the absolute destruction of its enemies as the only guarantee of the nation's security. So deeply embedded were the assumptions and procedures of this distinctively German military culture that the Army, in its drive to annihilate the enemy military, did not shrink from the utter destruction of civilian property and lives. Carried to its extreme, the logic of "military necessity" found real security only in extremities of destruction, in the "silence of the graveyard." Hull begins with a dramatic account, based on fresh archival work, of the German Army's slide from administrative murder to genocide in German Southwest Africa (1904–7). The author then moves back to 1870 and the war that inaugurated the Imperial era in German history, and analyzes the genesis and nature of this specifically German military culture and its operations in colonial warfare. In the First World War the routines perfected in the colonies were visited upon European populations. Hull focuses on one set of cases (Belgium and northern France) in which the transition to total destruction was checked (if barely) and on another (Armenia) in which "military necessity" caused Germany to accept its ally's genocidal policies even after these became militarily counterproductive. She then turns to the Endkampf (1918), the German General Staff's plan to achieve victory in the Great War even if the homeland were destroyed in the process―a seemingly insane campaign that completes the logic of this deeply institutionalized set of military routines and practices. Hull concludes by speculating on the role of this distinctive military culture in National Socialism's military and racial policies. Absolute Destruction has serious implications for the nature of warmaking in any modern power. At its heart is a warning about the blindness of bureaucratic routines, especially when those bureaucracies command the instruments of mass death.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801472938/?tag=2022091-20
2006
(A century after the outbreak of the Great War, we have fo...)
A century after the outbreak of the Great War, we have forgotten the central role that international law and the dramatically different interpretations of it played in the conflict's origins and conduct. In A Scrap of Paper, Isabel V. Hull compares wartime decision-making in Germany, Great Britain, and France, weighing the impact of legal considerations in each. Throughout, she emphasizes the profound tension between international law and military necessity in time of war, and demonstrates how differences in state structures and legal traditions shaped the way in which each of the three belligerents fought the war. Hull focuses on seven cases in which each government’s response was shaped by its understanding of and respect for the law: Belgian neutrality, the land war in the west, the occupation of enemy territory, the blockade, unrestricted submarine warfare, the introduction of new weaponry (including poison gas and the zeppelin), and reprisals. Drawing on voluminous research in German, British, and French archives, the author reconstructs the debates over military decision making and clarifies the role played by law―where it constrained action, where it was manipulated to serve military need, where it was simply ignored, and how it developed in the crucible of combat. She concludes that Germany did not speak the same legal language as the two liberal democracies, with disastrous and far-reaching consequences. The first book on international law and the Great War published since 1920, A Scrap of Paper is a passionate defense of the role that the law must play to govern interstate relations in both peace and war.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801452732/?tag=2022091-20
2014
Isabel Hull was born on July 26, 1949, in New York, United States.
Hull received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan in 1970 and her Doctor of Philosophy degree from Yale University in 1978.
Hull devoted her career to Cornell University. She began there as an assistant professor, and in 1977 she became a professor of history. Now Hull works as the John Stambaugh Professor of History and the former chair of the history department at Cornell University. Since January 2006, Hull has also served on the editorial board of the Journal of Modern History.
(A century after the outbreak of the Great War, we have fo...)
2014(This long-awaited work reconstructs the ways in which the...)
1996(In a book that is at once a major contribution to modern ...)
2006(This volume analyzes the immediate civilian and military ...)
2004Hull is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Research Society.