David Sorkin, a historian of Jewish and European history, has published a new book titled Jewish Emancipation: A History Across Five Centuries (Princeton University Press, 2019). Sorkin is a Professor Emeritus of our department and currently the Lucy G. Moses Professor of Modern Jewish History at Yale University. He specializes in the intersection of Jewish …
This past Sunday, December 8th, Professor Elizabeth Lapina was interviewed on Wisconsin Public Radio for a segment titled “Knightly Culture and the Crusades.” The host was Norman Gilliland, who co-produces the weekly WPR program “University of the Air.” Lapina delved into the questions about how the crusades began, what the crusaders were trying to achieve, …
Danielle Wendricks, a History major also studying Community and Nonprofit Leadership and Educational Policy at UW–Madison, took Horticulture 120 this semester with her grandparents, who audited the class as part of UW’s Senior Guest Auditor Program. The Senior Guest Auditor program allows Wisconsin residents 60 years of age and older to audit classes at the …
Professor Gloria Whiting recently published an article in Slavery & Abolition titled “Emancipation without the courts or constitution: the case of Revolutionary Massachusetts.” The essay rethinks the process by which freedom was inaugurated in Massachusetts, suggesting that slavery petered out before the constitution declared all men “free and equal.” Therefore, though historians have long believed …
Professor Elizabeth Hennessy, whose book On the Backs of Tortoises: Darwin, the Galapagos, and the Fate of an Evolutionary Eden (Yale University Press) was published this year, is on the longlist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award! This award is given for a book that “exemplifies literary excellence on the subject of the …
History Newsletter 2019-20 (pdf) Chair’s Welcome History Welcomes New Members ARCHIVE in NYC The Digital City, Migration, and You Faculty/Staff/Emeritus News and more… This issue and past copies of the newsletter can also be found on the History Newsletter page.
Recent graduate Sam Gee (B.A. in History and Religious Studies, 2017) has published a review essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books. The essay covers a recent biography of the prominent twentieth-century Austrian philosopher Martin Buber, as well as the republication of one of Buber’s well-known works. Gee is currently a doctoral student in …
Graduate student Jeffrey Guarneri recently published a piece titled “Cartographies of Global Connectivity in Interwar Japan,” in the Global Urban History Project blog. The GUHP is a well-known and respected transnational urban history association. Guarneri’s article discusses the dissemination and use of chōkanzu, or “bird’s-eye-view maps” commissioned by Japan’s municipal governments and chambers of commerce …
History alumnus Roberto Carmack (PhD, 2015) has recently published a book based on his dissertation research at UW–Madison. The book is titled Kazakhstan in World War II: Mobilization and Ethnicity in the Soviet Empire (University Press of Kansas, 2019). During his time at UW–Madison, Carmack was advised by Professor Francine Hirsch. Currently, he is an independent …
Please join us in congratulating Professor Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, whose most recent book The Ideas that Made America: A Brief History (Oxford University Press, 2019) was featured in the Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2019! The listing for the book reads, “Aspiring to do a little of everything, a professor covers various schools …