Office of the Chancellor

Dr. Vejas G. Liulevicius

Dr. Vejas Liulevicius, associate professor of history, “crafts lectures that seize students’ attention and imagination in the first minute,” said his nominators when he received the Excellence in Teaching Award at the 2003 Provost’s Honors Banquet. “He reaches out to students, captures their imagination, and involves them in discussions that encourage them to define their own opinions.”

His use of original documents and new research adds a sense of excitement to the classroom, says Liulevicius.

“In order to understand why people reacted the way they did in crises of the past, students need to start thinking in the terms that would have been in the forefront of people’s minds in those long-ago periods. One way to do that is to have students read original documents and think their way into the frame of mind of the people who wrote them.

“Current research being done right now by myself or colleagues about these periods draws rapt attention from students. That’s one of the most rewarding things, sharing new research. Students get the sense that they are being historians too.”

Liulevicius has won a string of honors since coming to UT in 1995. He received the UT Award for Professional Promise in Research and Creative Achievement in 2001. That same month, the history department presented him the 2001-2002 Leroy P. Graf Award for Faculty Excellence. Last year he also received the UT College of Arts and Sciences Award for Research and Creative Achievement in the Arts and Humanities for 2003-2006.

Specializing in modern German history with a special focus on German relations with Eastern Europe, Liulevicius’ undergraduate and graduate courses explore the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, the history of modern Germany and Austria, World War I, and nationalism. His honors Western Civilization courses have focused on topics ranging from the Utopian tradition to comparative nationalism.

His book, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I, published in 2000 by Cambridge University Press, explores how the WWI experiences of German soldiers at the Eastern Front informed the atrocities of the later Nazi occupation. A German edition of the book was published in 2002.

Last year, The Teaching Company of Chantilly, Virginia, released a taped lecture course by Liulevicius in its “Great Courses Series.” The Teaching Company seeks out the nation’s finest teachers for its lecture series.

He is currently working on a book about German views and stereotypes about Eastern Europe from 1800 to 2000, expanding on themes from his first book.

Liulevicius received the doctoral degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1994 and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Peace and Revolution from 1994-1995.