Lutz Kaelber has research and teaching interests in social theory, religion, memory, and comparative historical sociology. He is the author of Schools of Asceticism: Ideology and Organization in Medieval Religious Communities (1998; recipient of the 1999 Best Book Award of the American Sociological Association's Sociology of Religion section); the translator of Max Weber's History of Commercial Partnerships in the Middle Ages (2003); the co-editor of The Protestant Ethic Turns 100: Essays on the Centenary of the Weber Thesis (2005; with William Swatos) and three compilations of teaching materials published by the American Sociological Association. His recent publications address trauma and memory in Berlin (Canadian Journal of Sociology Online, 2007) and virtual traumascape at Auschwitz (e-Review of Tourism Research, 2007). His current research, funded by grants and awards from the College of Arts and Sciences, the Office of the Vice President for Research, and the Center for Teaching and Learning, is on American eugenics and commemorative practices at sites of "Euthanasia" crimes in Nazi Germany.