Overview

Dr. Jeff Hayton is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at ʹ University and serves as the Undergraduate Coordinator for the History Department. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his M.A. and B.A. from McMaster University. He is a student of Modern Europe and a specialist in Modern German history. He has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on popular culture, rock ‘n’ roll, and German history. His first book, Culture from the Slums: Punk Rock in East and West Germany, appeared with Oxford University Press in 2022. Dr. Hayton is currently working on a history of mountains and mountaineering in the German Democratic Republic.

Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2013

M.A., McMaster University, 2003

B.A., McMaster University, 2002

Professor Hayton is on academic sabbatical during the 2022-23 academic year.

Information

Academic Interests and Expertise
  • Modern European History
  • Modern German History
  • Popular Music and Sound Studies
  • Environmental History
  • Digital History
  • Theory and Methodology
Areas of Teaching Interest

An historian of Modern Europe, Professor Hayton regularly teaches the following courses:

  • History and Rock ‘n’ Roll
  • Western Civilization from 1648
  • Introduction to Historical Research and Writing
  • Modern German History
  • Comprehension and the Holocaust
  • Mountains and Their Meanings
  • Nazism and the Third Reich
  • Interwar Europe
  • Communism on the Silver Screen
  • Weimar Germany on the Silver Screen
  • Europe, 1870-1945
  • Europe, 1945-present
  • Historiography
  • Graduate Seminar European History
Publications

MONOGRAPHS

  • Culture from the Slums: Punk Rock in East and West Germany (Oxford University Press, 2022)

    * reviewed in American Historical Review, German Studies Review, German History, Slavic Review, Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, Canadian Slavonic Papers, among others

EDITED VOLUMES

  • eds., Scott Harrison, Jeff Hayton, and Katharine White, Socialist Subjectivities: Queering East Germany under Honecker (University of Michigan Press, 2025)

JOURNAL ARTICLES

  • “Socialist Internationalism on the Rocks: East German Mountaineers and Transnational Communist Climbing Culture,” Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung (2024)
  • “Brotherhood of the Rope: East German Mountaineers, Socialist Internationalism, and Communist Travel Cultures,” Twentieth Century Communism 26 (May 2024)
  • “Wutanfall: Emotional Entanglements of the East German Punk Subculture,” Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue Canadienne des slavistes 64, no. 4 (December 2022), pp.420-444

    * Winner of the Canadian Association of Slavists Article of the Year, 2022 ()

    “Crosstown Traffic: Punk Rock, Space and the Porosity of the Berlin Wall in the 1980s,” Contemporary European History 26,  no.2 (May 2017), 353-377
  • “Krawall in der Zionskirche: Skinhead Violence and Political Legitimacy in the GDR,” European History Quarterly 45, no.2 (April 2015), pp.336-356
  • Härte gegen Punk: Popular Music, Western Media, and State Response in the German Democratic Republic,” German History 31, no.4 (2013), pp.523-549

BOOK CHAPTERS

  • with Scott Harrison and Katharine White, “Introduction: Escaping the Black Hole of 1989,” in Socialist Subjectivities: Queering East Germany under Honecker, eds., Scott Harrison, Jeff Hayton, and Katharine White (University of Michigan Press, 2025)
  • “Making Punks: Subculture and Engagement in Late Socialist East Germany,” in Socialist Subjectivities: Queering East Germany under Honecker, eds., Scott Harrison, Jeff Hayton, and Katharine White (University of Michigan Press, 2025)
  • “Krautrock and German Punk,” in The Cambridge Companion to Krautrock, ed. Uwe Schütte (Cambridge University Press, 2022), pp.249-262
  • “Shouting Back: Protest and Political Movements,” in Musicking in Twentieth-Century Europe, eds., Klaus Nathaus and Martin Rempe (De Gruyter, 2020), pp.347-367
  • “Punk Authenticity: Difference across the Iron Curtain,” in The Politics of Authenticity: Countercultures and Radical Movements across the Iron Curtain, 1968-1989, eds., Joachim Häberlen, Mark Keck-Szajbel and Kate Mahoney (Berghahn, 2018), pp.212-232
  • “Ignoring Dictatorship? Punk Rock, Subculture and Political Challenge in the GDR,” in Dropping Out of Socialism: The Creation of Alternative Spheres in the Soviet Bloc, eds. Juliane Fürst and Josie McLellan (Lexington Books, 2016), pp.207-232
  • “Beyond Good and Evil: Nazis and the Supernatural in Video Games,” in The Nazi Soul between Science and Religion: Revisiting the Occult in the Third Reich, eds. Monica Black and Eric Kurlander (Camden House, 2015), pp.248-269
  • “‘The Revolution is over – and we have won!’: Alfred Hilsberg, West German Punk and the Sixties,” in The Global Sixties in Sound and Vision: Media, Counterculture, Revolt, eds. Timothy S. Brown and Andrew Lison (Palgrave, 2014), pp.135-150
  • “Digital Nazis: Genre, History and the Displacement of Evil in First-Person Shooters,” in Nazisploitation!: The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture, eds. Elizabeth Bridges, Kristin T. Vander Lugt, and Daniel H. Magilow (Continuum, 2011), pp.199-218
Awards and Honors
  • University Research/Creative Project (URCA), ʹ, 2022
  • Ard Faculty Award, Department of History, ʹ, 2019
  • Award for Research/Creative Projects (ARCS), ʹ, 2019
  • Central European History Society Travel and Research Grant, 2015
  • Award for Research/Creative Projects (ARCS), ʹ, 2015
  • William C. Widenor Teaching Fellowship, History Department, University of Illinois, 2011
  • Writing Fellowship, History Department, University of Illinois, 2009-2010
  • Research Fellowship, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), 2008-2009
  • Graduate Fellowship, Social Science & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), 2004-2008
  • The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS), 2002-2003