Rudy J. Koshar
Position title: Emeritus Professor
Email: rjkoshar@wisc.edu
Address:
Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
Biography
Rudy Koshar retired in May 2018 after thirty-eight years of teaching (twenty-seven at UW-Madison and eleven at the University of Southern California). He was the George L. Mosse / Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Professor of History, German, and Religious Studies. During his career he wrote on a variety of subjects, including the social roots of Nazism, German memory and historic environments, and the history of automobility and mass leisure in modern Europe and Germany. His books include Social Life, Local Politics, and Nazism (North Carolina, 1986); Germany’s Transient Pasts (North Carolina, 1998); From Monuments to Traces (California, 2000); and German Travel Cultures (Berg, 2000). He has received national and international fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation; American Council of Learned Societies; German Academic Exchange Service; German Marshall Fund; Max Planck Institute for History in Göttingen, Germany; and the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. At UW-Madison, he has held a number of fellowships, including a senior fellowship at the Institute for Research in the Humanities (1998-2003), and a Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Fellowship. In 2008 he won a Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award. In 2010, he began writing literary and historical fiction, and has since published forty-five short stories. His short fiction has been recognized with several awards, including second place in the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters Annual Fiction Prize competition (2013); a Pushcart Prize nomination (2015); and a Notable Story award in storySouth’s Million Writers’ competition (2016).
Education
Ph.D., University of Michigan
M.A., University of Michigan
B.A., Michigan State
Books
-
Rudy J. Koshar (Editor). The Weimar Moment Liberalism, Political Theology, and Law. Lexington Books, 2012. -
Rudy J. Koshar. German Travel Cultures. Oxford, 2000. -
Rudy J. Koshar. From Monuments to Traces: Artifacts of German Memory, 1870-1990. University of California Press, 2000. -
Rudy J. Koshar. Germany’s Transient Pasts: Historical Preservation and National Memory in Twentieth Century Germany. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. -
Rudy J. Koshar. Social Life, Local Politics, and Nazism: Marburg, 1880-1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
Selected Awards
- Second Place, Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters 2013 Fiction Contest
- Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award, UW-Madison, 2008-09
- John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
- German Marshall Fund of the United States Research Fellowship
- Jean Monnet Research Fellowship, European University Institute, Florence, Italy
- American Council of Learned Socieities Fellowship
- Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Professorship
History Courses Taught
- History 120 – Europe and the Modern World 1815-Present
- History 200 – Historical Studies – Topics: “Modern European Political Novels” – Syllabus 2013 (pdf)
- History 410 – Modern Germany 1871-present – Syllabus 2015 (pdf)
- History 415 – History of National Socialism
- History 470 – Religious Thought in Modern Europe – Syllabus 2009 (pdf)
- History 474 – European Social History, 1830-1914 – Syllabus 2013 (pdf)
- History 475 – European Social History, 1914 to Present – Syllabus 2017 (pdf)
- History 513 – European Cultural History, 1815-1870
- History 514 – European Cultural History 1870-present – Syllabus 2013 (pdf)
- History 600 – Christianity and Culture in Modern Europe
- History 600 – European Lives in the Twentieth Century
- History 600 – Religion and Politics in Modern Europe – Syllabus 2010 (pdf)
- History 600 – Fiction and Power in Modern Europe – Syllabus 2012 (pdf)
- History 600 – Modern European Political Novels – Syllabus 2013 (pdf)
- History 600 – Weimar Culture and the Rise of Nazism” – Syllabus 2015 (pdf)
- History 845 – Whither German Histories? – Syllabus 2017 (pdf)
- History 866 – Seminar in Social History of Modern Europe
- History 867 – Seminar in European Social and Intellectual History
- History 891 – Proseminar in Modern European History: Central Europe