Bernd Widdig studied Political Science, Sociology and German Literature at the University of Bonn and received his Ph.D. in German Studies from Stanford University.  He teaches courses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century German literature and culture, German Cinema, cross-cultural communication, and cultural change under the impact of globalization. He is also Director of the MIT-Germany Program and Associate Director of the MIT International Science & Technology Initiative (MISTI).

In his book Männerbünde und Massen. Zur Krise männlicher Identität in der Moderne (Male Bonding and the Masses. On the Crisis of Male Identity in German Modernism) published in 1992 he offers an innovative approach to the representation of masses and crowds in the literature and cultural theories of German modernism.

He has also written on literary reflections on National Socialism in postwar German literature, and the works of Thomas Mann, Gottfried Keller, Elias Canetti, and Wolfgang Koeppen. His new book, Culture and Inflation in Weimar Germany (University of California Press, 2001) investigates the cultural dimensions and representations of the German hyperinflation in the early Twenties.

Bernd Widdig is Affiliate scholar at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University