Anna Zeide (Ph.D. 2014) an alumna and current Assistant Professor of History at Oklahoma State University has received the 2019 award for best Reference, History and Scholarship book from the James Beard Foundation! Zeide won the award for her 2018 book Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry (University …
Alumnus Gregory Jones-Katz (Ph.D. 2016), has published an article in the journal Rethinking History. The article rereads French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s 1988 Critical Inquiry essay on literary critic and literary theorist Paul de Man’s collaborationist articles and his postwar silence. During his time at UW–Madison, Jones-Katz was advised by Professor Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, who specializes in U.S. intellectual …
Alumna Karen Spierling (Ph.D. 2001), an Associate Professor of History at Denison University, has written a piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “The Humanities Must Go on the Offensive.” In the article, Spierling presents an argument that “there is no functioning, stable, globalized world of the future without the humanities.” Spierling currently teaches …
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 …
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 …
Spiritual Socialists: Religion and the American Left Refuting the common perception that the American left has a religion problem, Vaneesa Cook highlights an important but overlooked intellectual and political tradition that she calls “spiritual socialism.” Spiritual socialists emphasized the social side of socialism and believed the most basic expression of religious values—caring for the sick, …
When the History of Science Society handed out its awards and prizes on Thursday, July 25, 2019 at its annual meeting (in Utrecht, Netherlands—the first HSS meeting ever in Europe!), UW–Madison History of Science Ph.D. alumni appeared in force. Michael Osborne (Ph.D. 1987; Professor at Oregon State University) received the Joseph H. Hazen Education Prize …
One of our program’s oldest alumni, Jenny Morrill (M.A. 1905) is the subject of a recently published article in On Wisconsin about a mysterious book theft that occurred at UW–Madison libraries over 100 years ago. Morrill was a graduate student in our program in 1905, completing her thesis under the influential American historian Frederick Jackson …
Recently graduated history major Daniel Ahrendt (B.A. December 2018), has received the 2019 Iwanter Prize for Undergraduate Research from the Center for the Humanities! The Iwanter Prize is an annual award of $2,000 given to a graduating senior who, “through a senior thesis and general academic distinction, demonstrates outstanding humanities-based scholarship of a broad and …
The History Department will remember Dr. Colin Palmer (Ph.D. 1970), who passed away on June 20, 2019 in Kingston, Jamaica. An alumnus of our program and a giant in his field, Palmer helped to expand the study of the African diaspora and the Atlantic slave trade over his 40-plus year career as a historian. Palmer …