The Department of History office is once again open. By order of the Chancellor, masks are currently required when inside all campus buildings, regardless of vaccination status. For more information about the UW-Madison’s COVID-19 response, visit this page.

Welcome! Building on more than a century of distinguished scholarship and teaching, our faculty and staff serve over 400 undergraduate majors along with many other students passionate about history. We are also home to a vibrant community of some 130 graduate students in both History and the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology.

A New Home for History

The new College of Letters & Science academic building will create a unified home for the Department of History and nine other L&S academic departments, programs and centers that currently are spread across eight facilities on campus. Read more…

Spring 2022 Courses

Spring 2022 History & History of Science courses are now available to view online. Explore our Courses page and Course Search & Enroll to find out more.

Statement of Commitment

Statement of Commitment to Eradicating White Supremacy, Institutional Racism, and Anti-Black Violence. We draft this statement of solidarity keenly aware that our own institution has to play a role in this quest for meaningful change. Statement of Commitment

Department News

Professor Gloria Whiting Wins Prize for Best Article in American Legal History
Professor Gloria Whiting has received the Cromwell Prize from the American Society for Legal History for her article, “Race, Slavery, and the Problem of Numbers in Early New England: A View from Probate Court.” This …
Professor Alfred McCoy Publishes New Book
Congratulations to Professor Alfred McCoy on the publication of his new book, To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change, out this month from Haymarket Books. From the publisher’s website: “In a tempestuous narrative …
Professor Lucas Richert Publishes New Book on the Global History of Cannabis
Lucas Richert, Associate Professor and George Urdang Chair in the History of Pharmacy and History Department faculty affiliate, has published a new book titled Cannabis: Global Histories (MIT Press, 2021). The book, co-edited by Lucas Richert …
Professor Sasha Suarez Speaks to Local News about Indigenous Activism
November is Native American Heritage Month, and to help bring awareness to Wisconsinites about some of the issues the Native American community have been facing, both past and present, Professor Sasha Suarez spoke with local Milwaukee news …
Paige Glotzer Receives Best Book in North American Urban History Award
Congratulations to Professor Paige Glotzer on receiving the 2021 Kenneth Jackson Award from the Urban History Association for How the Suburbs Were Segregated: Developers and the Business of Exclusionary Housing, 1890-1960 (Columbia University Press, 2020)! This …
Professor Emeritus Thomas Spear Receives AHA Prize for Best Reference Work
Congratulations to Professor Emeritus Thomas Spear for winning the American Historical Association’s Waldo G. Leland Prize for the best reference work published over the last five years! The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Historiography: Methods and Sources …
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