Overview

Dr. Jeff Hayton is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wichita State 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 (Article Prize – The Canadian Association of Slavists | Canadian Slavonic Papers)

    “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), Wichita State University, 2022
  • Ard Faculty Award, Department of History, Wichita State University, 2019
  • Award for Research/Creative Projects (ARCS), Wichita State University, 2019
  • Central European History Society Travel and Research Grant, 2015
  • Award for Research/Creative Projects (ARCS), Wichita State University, 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