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 …
The History Department announces up to three $500 prizes for a short (1-3 minute) video made by an undergraduate individual or team on the subject, “Why take History?” Videos may answer this question in a variety of ways. For instance, you might take up current events, video gaming, the uses of history for life, or …
The 2018 issue of “The Past in the Present” featured Ryan Smazal (History/Political Science, 2019) and his summer internship with WHS’s Maritime Preservation/Maritime Archeology Program. As part of his work that summer, he was certified by the Nautical Archaeology Society as an underwater archaeologist. He is now a graduate student studying earth and ocean sciences …
Professor Emeritus John W. Barker passed away on October 24th at the age of 86. Barker was an expert in late Byzantine and Venetian history whose work helped define Byzantine studies in the twentieth century. His biography of the Renaissance-era emperor Manuel II Palaeologus: 1391-1425: A study in late Byzantine Statesmanship (1969), and numerous other …