Department of History

Daniel Ussishkin

Position title: Professor of History

Email: ussishkin@wisc.edu

Phone: 608.263.1839

Address:
Office: 5112 Mosse Humanities
Mailbox: 5004 Mosse Humanities
Office Hours: Wednesday 1:00-3:00pm in 5122 Mosse Humanities or via Zoom

Daniel Ussishkin

Biography

I am a historian of modern Europe in general, and of modern Britain more particularly. My first book, Morale: A Modern British History (Oxford University Press, 2017), tries to answer the following question: how is it that modern Britons (and many others who took a similar path) have come to understand questions of conduct and its management in terms of collective attitude and morale? I try to answer this question by tracing the myriad iterations of the concept itself as it had emerged during the past two centuries, and by examining how Britons first tried to understand what morale actually was and then sought ways to secure it, thereby giving rise to entirely novel institutional practices and forms of knowledge, and linking those to myriad political projects.

I am now working on questions on imperial governance, as well as on a cultural history of the end of formal imperial rule in four former British Asian colonies.

Education

Ph.D., University of California – Berkeley
M.A., University of California – Berkeley
B.A., Tel Aviv University

Books

Selected Publications

  • “Morale and the Postwar Politics of Consensus,” Journal of British Studies 52, no. 3 (July, 2013), pp. 722-743.
  • “The Will to Work”: Industrial Management and the Question of Conduct in Interwar Britain,” in Laura Beers and Geraint Thomas, eds. A Brave New World? Empire and Nation-Building in Britain between the Wars (London: Institute for Historical Research, 2012).

Selected Awards

  • 2017-2019 Vilas Associate
  • 2013 Center for the Humanities First Book Award, UW – Madison
  • 2009-2011 Hanadiv (Rothschild) Postdoctoral Fellowship in European History
  • 2008-2009 Newhouse Humanities Center Fellowship, Wellesley College
  • 2007 James Kettner Prize for the Best Dissertation in History, UC Berkeley

History Courses