Research Expertise and Interest

Central America, politics, Balkans, foreign affairs, journalism, Haiti, documentaries, terrorism, the Middle East, voting and elections, contemporary literature, modernist writers, contemporary literature and film

Research Description

Mark Danner is the Class of 1961 Distinguished Chair in Undergraduate Education.  He is a writer and reporter who for thirty-five years has written on politics and foreign affairs, focusing on war and conflict, and on politics. He has covered Central America, Haiti, the Balkans, Iraq and the Middle East, and the War on Terror, among many other stories. Danner has also covered every American presidential election since 2000. As Class of 1961 Distinguished Chair Danner teaches in the Graduate School of Journalism and in the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley and is also James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities at Bard College. Among his books are The Massacre at El Mozote, Torture and Truth, The Secret Way to War, Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War and Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War,. Danner was a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. His work has appeared in Harper's, The New York Times, Aperture, and many other newspapers and magazines. He has co-written and helped produce two hour-long documentaries for the ABC News program Peter Jennings Reporting, and his work has received, among other honors, a National Magazine Award, three Overseas Press Awards, an Emmy, and a Guggenheim. In 1999 Danner was named a MacArthur Fellow. In 2016 he was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow. He speaks and lectures widely on foreign policy and America's role in the world.