Laird Boswell
Position title: Professor of History
Email: lboswell@wisc.edu
Phone: 608.263.1805
Address:
Office: 5127 Mosse Humanities
Mailbox: 5016 Mosse Humanities
Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
Office Hours: Tuesday 11:00am-1:00pm

Biography
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).
My research interests are: Modern European Social and Political; Modern France; Nationalism & border regions; Socialism and communism; the extreme right; history of rural societies & voter behavior.
Education
Ph.D., University of California – Berkeley
M.A., University of California – Berkeley
B.A., Hampshire College
Books
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Laird Boswell. Rural Communism in France, 1920-1939. Cornell University Press, 1998.
Selected Publications
- “Rural Society in Crisis,” in Nicholas Doumanis ed., Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914-1945, (Oxford University Press, 2016): 243-260.
- “Noël à Strasbourg” Paris-Match / L’Histoire (Paris) (May 2014): 80-83.
- “Rethinking the Nation at the Periphery,” French Politics, Culture and Society 27 (Summer 2009): 111-126.
- “Should France be Ashamed of its History? Coming to Terms with the Past in France and its Eastern Borderlands,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religion 9 (June 2008): 237-251.
- « L’historiographie du communisme français est-elle dans une impasse? », Revue française de science politique 55, no. 5-6 (2005): 919-934.
- “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.
Selected 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
History Lecture Courses
- History 120 – Europe and the Modern World, 1815 to the present – Syllabus 2022 (pdf)
- History 348 – France from Napoleon to the Great War, 1799-1914 – Syllabus 2021 (pdf)
- History 349 – Contemporary France, 1914 to the present – Syllabus 2025 (pdf)
- History 359 – Europe since 1945 – Syllabus 2024 (pdf)
- History 600 – European Populism since 1945 – Syllabus 2025 (pdf)
- History 600 – The European Union in Historical Perspective – Syllabus 2014 (pdf)
- History 600 – European Borderlands – Syllabus 2014 (pdf)
- History 600 – The European Extreme Right, 1945 to the present – Syllabus 2009 (pdf)
- History 600 – Europe: A Continent of Immigrants – Syllabus 2006 (pdf)
- History 701 – History in a Global Perspective: “Comparison in History” – Syllabus 2011 (pdf)
- History 710 – Dissertation Writing Workshop – Syllabus 2024 (pdf)
- History/French 804 – Identité et Citoyenneté: Perspectives Franco-européennes – Syllabus 2005 (pdf)
- History 868 – Seminar in Modern French History – Syllabus 2015 (pdf)
- History 891 – Postwar Europe – Syllabus 2013 (pdf)
- European Nationalism