As a department of the undergraduate College of Letters and Sciences, the UW-Madison History Department has over 750 undergraduate majors and serves countless additional students drawn to history to meet other requirements of the College.
As a member of the Graduate School, the History Department has a vibrant community of 200 graduate students.
For all of its students, the History Department is committed to providing an exciting and diverse intellectual community – and a connection to last a lifetime.
On June 6, 1944, a massive military force arrived on the beaches of Normandy in a surprise invasion intended to overthrow Nazi Germany. The story of brave Allied forces splashing ashore under heavy fire has been immortalized in novels, memoirs, documentary films, and blockbuster movies — with American GIs cast as the unequivocal heroes of [...]
Nine students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Letters & Science have received 2013-14 fellowships from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, the country’s flagship program for international exchange. The program provides recipients with funding for a full academic year of study, research or assistant teaching abroad. The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and [...]
Professors, instructors and advisers enlighten, challenge and inspire us. They can shape our opinions, push our work to new heights and spark an interest to learn more about a topic or discipline. In the 2011-12 academic year, the College of Letters & Science asked graduating seniors to nominate faculty or staff members who impacted their [...]
Finalists for dean of the College of Letters & Science will conduct public presentations and question and answer sessions ahead of the end of the semester. As part of formal campus interviews, the sessions will be held at 3:30 p.m. in the Gordon Dining and Event Center, 770 W. Dayton St., on the following dates: —Thursday, May [...]
No matter how busy Allan H. “Bud” Selig (BS’56, History and Political Science) gets, the Commissioner of Major League Baseball still makes time for University of Wisconsin-Madison students. Selig, who plans to write his memoirs on campus after his retirement, treasures his trips to Madison — particularly when they involve interacting with undergraduate students, who [...]
Three University of Wisconsin-Madison professors, along with a fourth candidate who taught at UW-Madison for 18 years, have been named finalists for the position of dean of the College of Letters & Science, UW-Madison’s largest academic unit. The new dean will succeed Gary Sandefur, who has led Letters & Science since 2004. Sandefur plans to step [...]
Two graduates of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Letters & Science will receive honorary degrees at commencement next month. Errol Morris (BA’69, History), who won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Film in 2003 for “The Fog of War,” is regarded as one of the most innovative and influential filmmakers of his generation. Richard [...]
Comic actor and writer Anders Holm (BA’03, History) will be the speaker for spring commencement ceremonies on May 17, 18 and 19. As a relatively recent graduate, Holm, 31, thinks he can deliver a relevant message to the new grads. “I can tell them about the first 10 years out of college, what I think I did [...]
The Institute for Research in the Humanities has announced its 2013-17 Senior Fellows. They are: Leslie Bow (English and Asian American Studies), Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity Senior Fellow Tomislav Longinović (Slavic Languages and Literature), Senior Fellow Steven Nadler (Philosophy), Senior Fellow Ron Radano (Music), Senior Fellow Louise Young (History), Senior Fellow The Institute offers up [...]
Several graduate programs from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Letters & Science are ranked among the nation’s best in the 2014 edition of U.S. News and World Report’s “Best Graduate Schools.” “We’re proud of all of our graduate programs and particularly pleased that once again many have been rated so highly,” says Provost Paul [...]
The family of Gerda Lerner, Robinson-Edwards Professor Emerita of U.S. Women’s History, will join with the Department of History to host a celebration of Lerner’s life and work on Sunday, April 28. Lerner died on Jan. 2 at her home in Madison. She was 92. The event will take place at 1 p.m. in the [...]
Five outstanding faculty members in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Letters & Science have been named winners of this year’s Kellett Mid-Career Awards. The Kellett award, supported by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, recognizes outstanding mid-career faculty members who are five to 20 years past the first promotion to a tenured position. Each winner, chosen [...]
Nineteen early-career faculty have been named fellows of the new Madison Teaching and Learning Excellence (MTLE) program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with 12 coming from the College of Letters & Science. The fellows competed with colleagues to participate in the yearlong program designed to improve undergraduate education by providing professional development in teaching and learning to [...]
The Institute for Research in the Humanities has announced its Resident Fellows and Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity Fellows for 2013-14. The Resident Fellows are: Nan Enstad (History), fall semester; Jordan Zweck (English), fall semester; Karen Britland (English), spring semester; Lauren Kroiz (Art History), spring semester; Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen (History), spring semester; and Ellen Sapega (Spanish and [...]
Gerda Lerner, Robinson Edwards Professor Emerita of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, died on Wednesday, Jan. 2 in an assisted-living facility in Madison. She was 92 years old. “Gerda Lerner was fierce, brilliant and unique,” said social and political activist Gloria Steinem. “She lived history by her bravery, restored history by her scholarship and [...]
Gerda Lerner, pioneer of women’s history, dies at 92 (Wisconsin State Journal) The professor emerita of history created a Ph.D. program in women’s history at UW-Madison after founding the first graduate program on the discipline in the country at Sarah Lawrence College. Read more…
Monumental discoveries were made. Critical projects were finished. Laudable programs were celebrated. And scholars and alumni were remembered in the College of Letters & Science’s 124th year.
These were just some of the markers of 2012 in L&S. Here are some of the moments that made 2012 a memorable year for the College.
Undergraduates in Louise Young’s lecture course on the Pacific war have no trouble remembering what happened in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. That’s because the Japanese attack looms large in our national psyche, says History professor Young, not only as the end of U.S. isolationism but as a metaphor for unreadiness. “Caught napping. Caught [...]
A scholar of “medieval media studies” and a historian of modern Europe have each won a 2012-13 First Book Award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for the Humanities. The annual award, funded by a short-term humanities grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, convenes an academic “dream team” of reviewers to help junior humanities faculty whip their first [...]
It’s not often college students are afforded the chance to have an unfiltered conversation with one of the most powerful figures in sports. But that’s precisely what 18 undergraduate History students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison had Tuesday afternoon when Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan H. “Bud” Selig (BS’56, History and Political Science) stopped by [...]
Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig will give the keynote address as a part of Ethics Week, sponsored by the Howard Carver Ethics and Professionalism Program at the Wisconsin School of Business. Selig’s remarks, titled “Perspectives on Ethical Leadership — A View from the Commissioner,” will be from 5:30 to 6:15 p.m. on Tuesday, [...]
President Abraham Lincoln is more monument than man to many Americans, with his image printed on our our currency and seated atop Bascom Hill, among other places. On Friday, director Steven Spielberg’s movie “Lincoln,” with Irish actor Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role, opens in theaters. UW-Madison experts discussed the depiction of presidents in the [...]
Donald Zillman (BS’66, History, JD’69), Richard Hoffman (BA’65, History), Richard Hays (BS’66, Political Science), and Stuart Grover (BA’66, MA’67, Ph.D.’71, History) made up the 1965 University of Wisconsin-Madison College Bowl team that competed at the national level. They won five straight matches on their way to retiring as undefeated champions! For their great achievement the four, along with [...]
As an undergraduate at Harvard University, Florencia Mallon wanted to write fiction. But fact came first. “For fiction, you really have to have a voice of your own,” Mallon says. “Back then, I wasn’t ready to express it.” So she studied Latin American history, a subject she has written numerous books about and has taught at the University of [...]
With a sweep of his pen, Abraham Lincoln changed the lives of 4 million black Americans when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation that led to the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery in the U.S. But a striking, often-overlooked campus mural by John Steuart Curry tells a part of the story that’s often forgotten. “The Freeing of the Slaves” adorns [...]
James Sweet, Vilas-Jartz Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been selected as the winner of the 2012 Frederick Douglass Book Prize for his book Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World (University of North Carolina Press). The Douglass Prize was jointly created by Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center [...]
Fifty years ago, on Saturday October, 20, 1962, 1,200 banquet diners attended a celebration at the Wisconsin Field House. Popular history professor Fred Harvey Harrington was inaugurated as the 14th President of the University of Wisconsin-Madison that day. The occasion also observed the centennial anniversary of the Morrill Land-Grant Act, which was signed into law [...]
A group of UW-Madison students and faculty have received 2012-13 grants from the Fulbright Program, the country’s flagship program for international educational exchange. Of the 21 recipients from UW-Madison, all but three are from the College of Letters & Science. Thirteen L&S students have won fellowships from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program; three graduate students in L&S [...]
Josh Bycel (BA’93, History) is known around Hollywood as a successful executive producer, having worked on hit shows like Scrubs and Happy Endings. But Bycel is also making a difference outside of the television industry, having co-founded the nonprofit OneKid OneWorld in 2005. The Wisconsin Homecoming Committee, in partnership with the Wisconsin Union Directorate Distinguished [...]
Eli Clare, acclaimed activist and author of the award-winning “Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation,” will visit UW-Madison as a Brittingham Visiting Scholar for the week of Oct. 8-12. Clare speaks, teaches, and facilitates all over the United States and Canada at conferences, community events, and colleges about disability, queer and trans identities, and [...]
In August 1958, University of Wisconsin-Madison Associate Professor of History William Appleman Williams (b. 1921– d. 1990) filled out a faculty information sheet for the University News Service. In these standardized forms, faculty members were asked to submit biographical information detailing their publications, honors, military service, membership in professional societies, and even their hobbies and [...]
As a historian of Modern China, Judd Kinzley’s research interests include environmental history, state power, industrial development, and wartime mobilization. He tries to understand the connections that exist between state power and the natural world in various Chinese peripheral and border regions. Currently, he is working on a manuscript that deals with mining and the [...]
The College of Letters & Science has more than 800 faculty, a group that includes brilliant researchers, noteworthy authors, and inspiring teachers. This year, the College welcomes more than 50 new faculty members. From Classics to Chemistry and from English to Economics, departments across L&S recruited emerging experts who bring impressive breadth and depth of [...]
Jamie Stark won a $2,000 prize funded by L&S alumnus Sidney Iwanter for his senior thesis.
“American history was screwball.” This is one of the many colorful quotes showcased in this 1982 interview with the late George Mosse, the famed UW-Madison history professor. Mosse taught European history at Madison from 1955 to 1989, and made enormous contributions to scholarship on Judaism, nationalism, and sexuality. The current Humanities building – as well [...]
Financial support from scholarships enables students like Amanda Detry, a senior from Green Bay majoring in English and history, to explore the many opportunities the UW has to offer. Amanda found her niche in the College of Letters and Science Honors Program and Writing Fellows programs. Both experiences gave her a sense of place at [...]
Professor Emeritus of History, Alfred Senn celebrated his 80th birthday on April 12, 2012 with a visit to Lithuania, where Vytautas Magnus University in Kauna sponsored a formal presentation of his new book Lithuania in my Life. The Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also presented Senn with a medal, “Star of Lithuanian Diplomacy,” and the [...]
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies, has selected one scholar from the College of Letters & Science and two additional members from University of Wisconsin-Madison for induction into the 2012 class. As in the past, the academy has chosen leaders from the realms of arts, academics, [...]
The College of Letters & Science is proud to announce that seven L&S faculty members received 2012 Distinguished Teaching Awards presented by the Wisconsin Alumni Association and the Secretary of the Faculty. The 2012 Recipients of the Distinguished Teaching Awards in the College of Letters & Science are: Jeffrey Beneker, associate professor of classics, Kiekhofer [...]
In this cartoon from the 1902 Badger Yearbook, acting president Edward A. Birge castes a slightly critical gaze towards two “naughty boys” aka new UW history department faculty members Carl Russell Fish and Asa Currier Tilton! Carl Fish received his PhD from Harvard and joined the history faculty in 1900. He was widely acclaimed by his students who commended [...]
The journey wasn’t easy. Early Japanese immigrants faced scorn from “xenophobic groups bent on rolling up the welcome mat,” Samuel O. Regalado said while delivering “One Base at a Time,” the January 24 Selig Distinguished Lecture in Sport and Society at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Like other migrants before them, the first generation, known as [...]
How baseball helped Japanese Americans develop an identity and bond with America will be addressed in the Selig Distinguished Lecture in Sport and Society on Tuesday, Jan. 24, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
What Friedrich Nietzsche did to America (The New York Times) Featuring Associate Professor of History Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen and her book, American Nietzsche, the New York Times describes what reading Nietzsche did for American audiences. Read More…
Professor Neil Kodesh (History) recently won the Melville J. Herskovits Award for his book Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda (University of Virginia Press, 2010). The award is bestowed by the African Studies Association and recognizes the most important scholarly work in African studies published in English during the preceding year. Kodesh’s book examines the [...]
Professor Jim Sweet (History) won the James A. Rawley Prize in Atlantic History for his recent book Domingos Alvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World (University of North Carolina Press, 2011) The prize is awarded by the American Historical Association and recognizes outstanding historical writing that explores aspects of integration of Atlantic worlds before [...]
University of Wisconsin–Madison senior Alexis Brown is one of an elite group of American students to be awarded a 2012 Rhodes Scholarship, one of the most coveted honors in the world of higher education. Brown is an English and history double major from Algonquin, Ill. She applied for a Rhodes Scholarship to complete a master of studies in English language and literature. Her work, in the classroom and the community, demonstrates how narrative “helps us to think about the social, the ethical, and the existential,” according to her application materials.
Historians and political junkies soon will have more Richard Nixon material to kick around, thanks to a UW–Madison professor emeritus who has fought for years to get the secret records of the former president made public.
Eleven distinguished faculty members have received named professorships, some of the highest honors for established faculty. L&S is proud to count eight of the faculty members in the L&S community: Susan Coppersmith, Steven Durlauf, Gregg Mitman and Karen Strier have been named Vilas Professors Stephen Carpenter, Steve J. Stern, Dan Hausman were named Hilldale Professors. [...]
Congratulations to the following College of Letters & Science staff members who all received a 2011-2012 College of Letters & Science Professional Development Grant.
The L&S Honors Program held its Second Annual Distinguished Honors Faculty Award program to recognize seven faculty members for their contributions to the Honors Program. All were nominated by students and their contributions to enriching the undergraduate educational experience at Wisconsin have been enormous.
Congratulations to the 10 UW-Madison Letters & Science alumni for their recognition at the 63rd Primetime Emmys! In total, Letters & Science alums were nominated for12 Emmys.
William Courtenay, University of Wisconsin-Madison Hilldale Professor and Charles Homer Haskins Professor Emeritus of History, has been elected a corresponding fellow to the British Academy.
5 Other Surprise Attacks That Changed History (NPR) Featuring military historian John W. Hall.
Two well-known College of Letters & Science staff will soon be honored in the a publication produced by the Center for Study of the American Constitution in the UW-Madison Department of History. Assistant Deans Maggie Sullivan (Human Resources) and Linda Johnson (Pre-Award Research Services) will be honored in the acknowledgments of The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution Volume XXIV: Ratification of the Constitution by the States: Rhode Island, Vol 1.
Four faculty members from the College of Letters & Science at UW-Madison were elected 2011 Fellows to the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters …
The College of Letters & Science is proud to count eight young alumni as recipients of the 2011 Forward Under 40 award from the Wisconsin Alumni Association.
The L&S Honors Program is proud to announce this year’s winner of the Mark Mensink Award and winners of undergraduate Trewartha Senior Thesis Grants. The L&S Faculty Honors Committee has awarded college’s largest research grant, the Mark Mensink Award, to Alexandra Demet, a double major in Comparative Literature and Art History to fund her archival [...]
Where will a liberal arts education take you? For these 26 Letters & Science alumni, a liberal arts took them on a path to Pulitzer Prizes. A total of 26 alumni have won the prestigious award.
The L&S Honors Program celebrated its 50th anniversary on November 4-5, 2010. The L&S Honors program is unique in the country — it was started as a response to a petition signed by 172 students in 1958. The students demanded more rigorous course work at UW-Madison.
LISAR Professor Charles Cohen, Director of the Lubar Institute for the Study of the Abrahamic Religions, has been invited to deliver a public lecture, “Jews and Muslims in Christian America,” on Thursday, January 20, 2011, 6:30pm, at the New York Public Library’s Mid-Manhattan Branch.
History Professor Mary Louise Roberts made the cover of the October 2010 issue of the American Historical Review with her article “The Price of Discretion: Prostitution, Venereal Disease, and the American Military in France, 1944–1946″. During the Allied campaign in Europe during the Second World War, prostitution became a point of contention between the United [...]
The innovative documentary filmmaker and alumnus Errol Morris (BA’69, History) visited UW-Madison October 21-22 as the capstone event of the month-long retrospective “Elusive Truths: The Cinema of Errol Morris.”
Taking a class while stationed in Iraq? UW-Madison History Professors Jeremi Suri and Jon Pevehouse make it possible: http://ow.ly/2o4q9
The College of Letters & Science scored a grand slam for a second year with a sweep of the 74th Distinguished Alumni Awards.
A prize-winning author known for his global research on modern-day slavery will deliver a free public lecture this month at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as part of a daylong symposium on human trafficking.
History Professor Jeremi Suri was recently featured in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about his History 102 course and related research on April 10th, “UW history professor takes students on a Cold War ride.”
Here’s a round-up of all of the recent awards and honors to faculty, staff and students in L&S…
Four L&S faculty have been awarded development grants from the Provost’s office.
On November 6-7, a group of UW-Madison faculty, students and distinguished visitors gathered for a singular event: theUW-Madison Grand Strategy Workshop.
Continuing the “Fall of the Wall” events this year, the Department of German rolled out the 42nd Wisconsin Workshop: “The Wall Came Down.”
‘Tis the season and L&S faculty and students are racking up the awards – congratulations to all!
UW undergraduate Andrew J. O’Connor is the 2009-10 recipient of theMark Mensink Honors Senior Thesis Research Award. O’Connor is a senior studying History. This award, one of the largest student research awards on campus, provides the equivalent of two semesters in-state tuition to an outstanding Senior Honors student. The award is given for the most distinguished [...]
Six Letters & Science Honors students have received $2,000 Trewartha Senior Thesis grants.
Jeremi Suri, E. Gordon Fox Professor of History and Director of the European Union Center of Excellence, is trying something new this fall.
The UW-Madison will host a semester-long fall lecture series based on the scholarship and art of Hip Hop.
