Professor Wheatland is a specialist in modern European cultural and intellectual history with a focus on the history of Central Europe. In all of his courses, Professor Wheatland is focused on how our world became the way that it is and, thus, enabling students to take ownership of their thoughts and assumptions about the world.
In addition to teaching general survey courses in European History (HIS 116 and HIS 117), Professor Wheatland teaches a pair of courses on European Diplomatic history built around four multi-day simulations that place students in the shoes of diplomats negotiating major international crises. He also teaches courses on Modern German History, Modern Austria (with a focus on Vienna), a survey of European cultural and intellectual history since 1870, and a thematic course on the concept of totalitarianism and its applicability to Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy. His proseminar and seminar revolve around his central area of expertise – the exiles who fled Nazi Germany and resettled in the United States. Students in Professor Wheatland’s research courses have written on a variety of individuals from the fields of architecture, visual art, cinema, literature, music, the natural and physical sciences, philosophy, history, political science, economics, sociology, psychology, and theology.
Post-Baccalaureate Scholarship Advisor:
In addition to his role as a member of the Department of History, Professor Wheatland also serves as the Post-Baccalaureate Scholarship Advisor at Assumption University. In this role, Professor Wheatland advises and mentors Assumption students applying for the Rhodes, Gates, Marshall, Mitchell, Truman, Boren, and Fulbright Scholarships.
Scholarship:
Professor Wheatland is an internationally recognized specialist in the area of German Exile Studies. His first book, The Frankfurt School in Exile, was the first study that looked at the history of the famous Institute for Social Research in relation to its U.S. colleagues, rivals, sponsors, and detractors. It has been reviewed extensively on both sides of the Atlantic and has been acknowledged as a “must-read book” for those interested in Critical Theory, Transatlantic Studies, and the history of the social sciences. His second book (co-authored with David Kettler, Bard College), Learning from Franz L. Neumann, is the definitive intellectual biography of its subject. Neumann was a lawyer, legal theorist, political scientist, and research analyst for the famed Office for Strategic Services. As such, he was an important contributor to the legal architecture of the Weimar Republic, an inventor of Critical Legal Studies, an influential analyst of Nazi Germany, a central legal advisor for the U.S. prosecution at the Nuremburg Trials, and an early pioneer of U.S. denazification efforts in Postwar Germany. Although his life was cut short in 1954, Neumann accomplished much in his career – including his masterpiece, Behemoth, which was the first definitive study of the political, legal, economic, and ideological underpinnings of the Third Reich. In addition to these two books, Professor Wheatland is regularly invited to international conferences and contributes articles and book reviews in the fields of Central European History, Modern European Intellectual History, German Exile Studies, Transatlantic Studies, the History of the Social Sciences, and Critical Theory. Currently, he is juggling two book projects. The first is a book aimed at general readers and advanced undergraduates in the social sciences, and it reintroduces the thought of the famous social psychologist, Erich Fromm. His second book project is an intellectual history of the concept of fear and how it has been explained and understood within the social sciences.
Degrees Earned
Ph.D., Boston College, History
MA, Boston College, History
BA, Brown University, Double Major in History and Psychology
Undergraduate Courses Taught
Modern Europe and the United States 1 (1200 – 1815)
Modern Europe and the United States 2 (1815 – present)
Western Civilization 1 (Antiquity – 1715)
Western Civilization 2 (1715 – present)
European History 1 (Antiquity – 1715)
European History 2 (1715 – present)
German History since 1870
Totalitarianism and Everyday Life
19th Century European Diplomatic History
20th Century European Diplomatic History
Rise and Decline of European Primacy, 1870 – present
Hitler’s Vienna
The Weimar Republic (Proseminar)
Hitler’s Exiles (Seminar)
Awards and Accolades
2021: Faculty Award, Assumption University Student Government Association & Student Leaders (2020-2021 Academic Year)
2015: Sabbatical, Assumption College (2015-2016 Academic Year)
2006: Finalist for the Harper-Schmidt Postdoctoral Fellowship, Society of Fellows, University of Chicago
2003: Finalist for the Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize in German History, German Historical Institute
2001: Boston College’s Donald J. White Teaching Excellence Award
1998: Joint Travel Fellowship for German-Jewish History from the Leo Baeck Institute and the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst
1998: Boston College Dissertation Fellowship
Publications
The Frankfurt School in Exile [paperback edition] (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, April 2023) Weblink: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-frankfurt-school-in-exile
Learning from Franz L. Neumann: Law, Theory, and the Brute Facts of Political Life, co-author David Kettler (London & New York: Anthem Press, 2019) Weblink: https://www.anthempress.com/index.php/learning-from-franz-l-neumann-hb
Interview: https://newbooksnetwork.com/david-kettler-and-thomas-wheatland-learning-from-franz-l-neumann-anthem-press-2019
The Frankfurt School in Exile (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, April 2009) Weblink: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-frankfurt-school-in-exile
Interview: https://newbooksnetwork.com/thomas-wheatland-the-frankfurt-school-in-exile
Interview: https://kpfa.org/episode/62725/
Editorial Board, Berlin Journal of Critical Theory (2017-present) Weblink: https://www.bjct.de/home.html
Review of Writing the History of Emotions: Concepts and Practices, Economies and Politics by Ute Frevert for Choice Reviews, vol. 62, no. 9 (May 2025)
Review of The Oxford Handbook of Emile Durkheim edited by Hans Joas and Andreas Pettenkofer for Choice Reviews, vol. 62, no. 5 (January 2025)
“Philosophical Flaschenpost: Critical Theory and the Transatlantic History of Postwar Philosophy,” American Philosophy and the Intellectual Migration: Pragmatism, Logical Empiricism, Phenomenology, Critical Theory, edited by Sander Verhaegh (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2025)
Review of Asylum Between Nations: Refugees in a Revolutionary Era by Janet Polasky for Choice Reviews, vol. 62, no. 1 (September 2024)
Review of Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times by Samuel Moyn for Choice Reviews, vol. 61, no. 5 (January 2024)
Review of Warping Time: How Contending Political Forces Manipulate the Past, Present and Future by Benjamin Ginsberg and Jennifer Bachner for Choice Reviews, vol. 61, no. 4 (December 2023)
Review of The Invention of Marxism: How an Idea Changed Everything by Christina Morina for Choice Reviews, vol. 61, no. 2 (October 2023)
Review of The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism by Matt Zwolinski & John Tomasi for Choice Reviews, vol. 61, no. 1 (September 2023)
Review of Georg Lukács and Critical Theory: Aesthetics, History, Utopia by Tyrus Miller for Choice Reviews, vol. 60, no. 11 (July 2023)
Review of Afro-Sweden: Becoming Black in a Color-Blind Country by Ryan Thomas Skinner for Choice Reviews, vol. 60, no. 10 (June 2023)
Review of Anticolonial Eruptions: Racial Hubris and the Cunning of Resistance by Geo Maher for Choice Reviews, vol. 60, no. 6 (February 2023)
Review of Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after Consumerism by Gregory Claeys for Choice Reviews, vol. 60, no. 5 (January 2023)
Review of The Class Matrix: Social Theory after the Cultural Turn by Vivek Chibber for Choice Reviews, vol. 60, no. 3 (November 2022)
Review of Erich Fromm and Global Public Sociology by Neil McLaughlin for the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, vol. 58, no. 4 (Fall 2022)
Review of Between Containment and Rollback: The United States and the Cold War in Germany by Christian Ostermann for Choice Reviews, vol. 59, no. 12 (August 2022)
Review of Selected Writings on Marxism by Stuart Hall for Choice Reviews, vol. 59, no. 5 (January 2022)
Review of Restless Ideas: Contemporary Social Theory in an Anxious Age by Tony Simmons for Choice Reviews, vol. 59, no. 2 (October 2021)
Review of Employing Nietzsche’s Sociological Imagination by Jack Fong for Choice Reviews, vol. 58, no. 12 (August 2021)
Review of The Invention of the Self: Personal Identity in the Age of Art by Andrew Spira for Choice Reviews, vol. 58, no. 10 (June 2021)
“Denazification & Post-War German Philosophy: The Marcuse/Heidegger Correspondence,” The End of Exile: First Letters to and from Thomas Mann, Hannah Arendt, and Others, edited by David Kettler and Detlef Garz (New York: Anthem Press, 2021)
Review of A Companion to Antonio Gramsci: Essays on History and Theories of History, Politics and Historiography edited by Davide Cadeddu for Choice Reviews, vol. 58, no. 5 (January 2021)
Review of Power in Modernity: Agency Relations and the Creative Destruction of the King’s Two Bodies by Isaac Arial Reed for Choice Reviews, vol. 58, no. 4 (December 2020)
Review of Theodor Adorno and the Century of Negative Identity by Eric Oberle for The American Historical Review, vol. 125, no. 5 (December 2020)
Review of A Time for Critique edited by Didier Fassin & Bernard Harcourt for Choice Reviews, vol. 57, no. 9 (May 2020)
Review of Jewish Exiles and European Thought in the Shadow of the Third Reich: Baron, Popper, Strauss, Auerbach by David Weinstein and Avihu Zakai for Central European History (March 2020)
Review of Born After: Reckoning with the German Past by Angelika Bammer for Choice Reviews, vol. 57, no. 3 (November 2019)
Review of Habermas: A Biography by Stefan Müller-Doohm for The American Historical Review, vol. 123, no. 5 (December 2018)
“The Experience of Exile,” The Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt School, edited by Axel Honneth, Peter Gordon, and Espen Hammer (New York: Routledge, 2018)
“Critical Theory: The Los Angeles Years,” Berlin Journal of Critical Theory, vol. 1, no. 2 (December 2017)
Review of Arendt and America by Richard King for Society, vol. 54, no. 2 (April 2017)
Review of The Weimar Century: German Émigrés and the Ideological Dimensions of the Cold War by Udi Greenberg for The American Historical Review, vol. 121, no. 5 (December 2016)
Roundtable review of The Frankfurt School, Jewish Lives, and Antisemitism, by Jack Jacobs for German Quarterly, vol. 89, no. 1 (January 2016)
“Franz L. Neumann: Negotiating Political Exile,” in “More Atlantic Crossings?: The Postwar Atlantic Community,” German Historical Institute Bulletin Supplement, edited by Jan Logemann and Mary Nolan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014)
“’Has Germany a Political Theory? Is Germany a State?’ The Foreign Affairs of Nations in the Political Thought of Franz L. Neumann” (co-written with David Kettler), Émigré Scholars and the Genesis of International Relations: A European Discipline in America?, edited by Felix Rösch (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
“How Can We Tell It to the Children? A Deliberation at the Institute for Social Research, 1941” (co-written with David Kettler), Thesis Eleven: Critical Theory and Historical Sociology, no. 111 (August 2012)
“Debate about Methods in the Social Sciences, Especially the Conception of Social Science Method for Which the Institute Stands” (trans. with David Kettler), Thesis Eleven: Critical Theory and Historical Sociology, no. 111 (August 2012)
Review of Heidegger in America, by Martin Woessner for The American Historical Review, vol. 117, no. 3 (June 2012), 879
Review of Habermas: An Intellectual Biography, by Matthew G. Specter for Central European History, vol. 45, no. 1 (March 2012), 169-172
“Marcuse schreibt an Heidegger: Welcher Kontext sollte eine Interpretation formen?” in Erste Briefe: First Letters aus dem Exil, 1945-1950, edited by David Kettler and Detlef Garz (München: Text & Kritik, 2012)
“An Adorno Renaissance? Critical Theory and George W. Bush’s America,” review of Things Beyond Resemblance: Collected Essays on Theodor W. Adorno, by Robert Hullot-Kentor, H-German (July 2007)
“In den Armen der Alma Mater: Die Frankfurter Schule an der Columbia Universität,” in Veränderte Weltbilder: Hannoversche Schriften, Band 6, edited by Detlev Claussen, Oskar Negt, and Michael Werz (Frankfurt-am-Main: Neue Kritik, 2005)
“Not-Such-Odd Couples: Paul Lazarsfeld, the Horkheimer Circle, and Columbia University,” in Exile, Science, and Bildung: The Contested Legacies of German Émigré Intellectuals, edited by David Kettler and Gerhard Lauer (New York: Palgrave, 2005)
“Critical Theory on Morningside Heights: From Frankfurt Mandarins to Columbia Sociologists,” German Politics and Society, Volume 22, no. 4 (Winter 2004)
“Critical Theory on Morningside Heights: The Frankfurt School’s Invitation from Columbia University,” German Politics and Society, Volume 22, no. 3 (Fall 2004)
“Contested Legacies: Political Theory and the Hitler Era” (co-written with David Kettler), in the European Journal of Political Theory, special edition edited by David Kettler and Thomas Wheatland (April 2004)
Presentations
Conference Papers
“Philosophical Flaschenpost: Critical Theory and the Transatlantic History of Postwar Philosophy,” international conference entitled “Euro-American Migration and the Development of Postwar Philosophy,” (sponsored by the Dutch Research Council) Tilburg University, The Netherlands (August 22-23, 2022) [invited]
“Like the Lukács Problem, But Worse: Franz L. Neumann, Soviet Spy,” Festkonferenz in honor of Mary Gluck, Brown University (April 9, 2022) [invited]
“The American Reception of One-Dimensional Man,” international conference entitled “The Many Dimensions of Herbert Marcuse,” Brandeis University (October 1-2, 2014) [invited]
“Critical Theory: The Los Angeles Years,” international symposium entitled “Los Angeles as a Site of German-American Crossings” (sponsored by the Max Kade Institute, the German Historical Institute, the Institute for California and the West, and the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library) University of Southern California, Los Angeles (February 7-8, 2014) [invited]
“Re-Made in America: The Transformation of Critical Theory in the United States,” Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, New Orleans, LA (January 3-6, 2013)
“Considering the Contexts for Critical Theory: John Abromeit’s Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School and Matthew Specter’s Jürgen Habermas: An Intellectual Biography,” Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association, Milwaukee, WI (October 4-7, 2012)
“Franz L. Neumann: Negotiating the Politics of Research,” international workshop entitled “More Atlantic Crossings?” German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C. (June 7-9, 2012)
“Behemoth and the State: The Seventieth Anniversary of Franz Neumann’s Classic and Political Studies Today” (a roundtable discussion with David Kettler, Thomas Wheatland, Paul Petzschmann, Peter Breiner, John McCormick, and Regina Gamer), Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL (April 12-15, 2012)
“Franz L. Neumann: The Specter Haunting Late Critical Theory,” international colloquium entitled “The Frankfurt School and Anti-Semitism Revisited,” (sponsored by the Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relationships, Woolf Institute) Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK (June 24-25, 2010) [invited]
“Marcuse Writes to Heidegger: What Context Should Shape an Interpretation,” international workshop entitled “First Letters,” Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz (January 13-16, 2010) [invited]
“The Critical Theorist as Celebrity: The U.S. Legacy of Herbert Marcuse and his Flaschenposte,” Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association, Washington, D.C. (October 8-11, 2009)
“Denazification & Post-War German Philosophy: The Marcuse/Heidegger Correspondence,” international workshop entitled “First Letters: German and Austrian Exiles and their First Correspondences ‘Home,’ 1945-1947,” Trinity College, Hartford, CT (November 15-17, 2008) [invited]
“German Social Theory in an American Context: The Case of Herbert Marcuse and his Discourse of Dissent,” international symposium entitled “The ‘Other’ Alliance: Political Protest, Intercultural Relations and Collective Identities in West Germany and the United States, 1958-77,” Internationales Wissenschaftsforum Heidelberg (May 19-22, 2005)
“Paul Lazarsfeld, the Horkheimer Circle, and Columbia University,” international conference entitled “Contested Legacies: An International Conference on the German-Speaking Intellectual and Cultural Emigration to the United States and United Kingdom, 1930-1945,” Bard College (August 13-15, 2002)
“Isolation, Assimilation, and Opposition: The Reception of the Horkheimer Circle in the United States, 1934-1979,” international conference entitled “East-West American Studies Conference: Cultural Exchanges between Central/Eastern Europe and America,” Zentrum für Nordamerika-Forschung, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University of Frankfurt-am-Main (May 30 – June 2, 2002)
“The Owl of Minerva Comes to New York: Sidney Hook, the Horkheimer Circle, and the Birth of the ‘New York Intellectual,’” international conference entitled “New Perspectives in Transatlantic Studies,” Maastricht Center for Transatlantic Studies, Maastricht, Netherlands (October 12-14, 2000)
“Thoughts on the Reception of Ideas: The ‘Konstanz School’ and Intellectual History,” Boston Area History Symposium, Boston College (April 5, 1997)
Public Lectures
“Warranted Speculations: Franz L. Neumann, Soviet Spy?” keynote address at the induction ceremony for the Phi Alpha Theta chapter of Assumption University, Worcester, MA (March 31, 2023) [invited]
“Franz L. Neumann: Negotiating Exile,” presented for the History and Sociology Departments, Wellesley College (April 11, 2011) [invited]
“The Origins of the Central Intelligence Agency: The Office of Strategic Services,” presented as part of a panel for Question Your History: The Central Intelligence Agency, organized by Students Advocating Change, Assumption College (Nov. 17, 2010) [invited]
“Herbert Marcuse & Brandeis University: The Transformation from European Social Researcher to US Public Intellectual,” presented as part of a panel entitled Manhattan Transfer: Re-Evaluating the Impact of Exile on Theodor W. Adorno & Herbert Marcuse, Center for German and European Studies, Brandeis University (March 17, 2009) [invited]
“Misunderstandings and Media Distortions: A Commentary on Detlev Claussen’s ‘Malentendu? Adorno – A History of Misunderstandings,’” Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies, Harvard University (March 16, 2009) [invited]
“The Revolution is Unbelievable Because Its Real: Herbert Marcuse and the Intellectual History of the New Left,” keynote address at the induction ceremony for the Phi Alpha Theta chapter of Assumption College, Worcester, MA (April 8, 2008) [invited]