Laird Boswell
Professor

eMail: lboswell@wisc.edu
Phone: (608)263-1805
Office: 5127 Mosse Humanities
Mailbox: 5016 Mosse Humanities

Curriculum Vitae: View PDF

Office Hours: Fridays 1:00 - 3:00

Education: PhD: University of California - Berkeley; MA: University of California - Berkeley; BA: Hampshire College

Bio Sketch:

I’m a historian of Modern Europe, especially France, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.   My teaching and research interests have focused largely on society and politics – ranging from the transformations of rural society, to the history of European socialism and communism, the history of nationalism, voter behavior and, more recently, the contemporary extreme right.  I have also undertaken extensive work in quantitative and oral history.  I wrote my first book on peasant communism in France  and am now completing a study that uses the border region of  Alsace and Lorraine to discuss changing conceptions of national belonging in twentieth century France.   In addition to my work in the History department, I have directed the University of Wisconsin Center for European Studies and have served as director of the UW study abroad program in Aix-en-Provence, France.   I also work with student in the Professional French Masters Program interested in contemporary French politics and society (immigration, social movements, European affairs).

Research Interests:

Modern European Social and Political; Modern France;  Nationalism & border regions;  Socialism and communism; the extreme right; history of rural societies & voter behavior.

Selected Publications:

•  Rural Communism in France, 1920-1939 (Cornell University Press, 1998).  French Translation : Le communisme rural en France : Le Limousin et la Dordogne de 1920 à 1939 (Limoges : Presses Universitaires de Limoges, 2006)
• « L’historiographie du communisme  français est-elle dans une impasse? » [Has the Historiography of French communism reached a dead end?], Revue française de science politique 55, no. 5-6 (2005): 919-934.
•  “Repenser l’histoire de l’Alsace grâce à l’histoire des régions frontalières,” forthcoming in Actes de l’Université européenne d’été (Strasbourg)
• “Alsace-Lorraine,” in  Encyclopedia of Europe: 1789-1914. John Merriman and Jay Winter, eds. (New York: Charles Scribner’s, forthcoming).
• “La petite propriété fait le communisme (Limousin, Dordogne),”  Etudes Rurales no. 171-172 (July-December 2004) : 73-82. 
• “Fissures dans la nation française:  les réfugiés Alsaciens et Lorrains en 1939-1940,” in Max Lagarrigue ed., 1940, La France du repli, l’Europe de la défaite (Toulouse: Privat, 2001), 197-208.
• “From Liberation to Purge Trials in the “Mythic Provinces:”  the Reconfiguration of Identities in Alsace and Lorraine, 1918-1920,”  French Historical Studies 23 (Winter 2000): 129-162.
• “Franco-Alsatian Conflict and the Crisis of National Sentiment during the Phoney War,”  Journal of Modern History  (September 1999): 552-584.
• “Le communisme et la défense de la petite propriété en Limousin et en Dordogne,” Communisme [Paris] 51-52 (1998):  7-27.
• "The French Rural Communist Electorate," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (Spring 1993): 719-749.
• Review essay :  “How do French Peasants Vote?" Peasant Studies 16: 2 (Winter 1989):  107-122.

Awards:

• University of Wisconsin Sabbatical (2005)
• University of Wisconsin Graduate School Research Committee Summer funding (2004; 1998; 1996)
• Humanities Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Resident Fellowship (1997)
• German Marshall Fund of the United States Research Fellowship (1995)
• National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Stipend, 1991

Courses Taught:

Lecture Courses:

• History 348: France from Napoleon to the Great War, 1799-1914 - Syllabus 2008 (pdf)
• History 349: Contemporary France, 1914 to the present - Syllabus 2006 (pdf)
• History 359: Europe since 1945 - Syllabus 2007 (pdf)
• History 120: Europe and the Modern World, 1815 to the present - Syllabus 2006 (pdf)

Undergraduate Seminars:

• History 600 - Advanced Seminar in History - Topics: "Europe: A Continent of Immigrants" Syllabus 2006 (pdf); "European Borderlands" Syllabus 2008 (pdf)
• Europe since 1945
• European Nationalism

Graduate Courses:

• History 868: Seminar in Modern French History - Syllabus 2008 (pdf)
• History 891: Proseminar in Twentieth Century European History - Syllabus 2004 (pdf)
• French 532 :  Europe Module for “Cultures et sociétés dans le monde francophone” (Professional French Masters Program) - Syllabus PFMP 2005 (pdf)
• History/French 804.Identité et Citoyenneté: Perspectives Franco-européennes - Syllabus (pdf)