Conrad Allen, George L. Mosse European Cultural History Fellow
Conrad Allen is a doctoral student in the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his M.A. from UW in 2018 and holds a B.A. in history from the Ohio State University. His research focuses on the relationship between class, gender, and war in Europe during the twentieth century. In his M.A. thesis he looked at how aristocratic ideas of manliness shaped British army tactics during the world wars, particularly within the cavalry. He is currently planning his dissertation research, in which he hopes to examine how the memory of the First World War was shaped throughout Western Europe.
Donatello Aramini, Mosse-Friends of UW Libraries Fellow (2020-2021)
Donatello Aramini has a PhD in Contemporary History. He is a lecturer in Contemporary History at the Department of Political Sciences, Sapienza University of Rome. He has taught History of contemporary Italy and the history of journalism at the Roma Tre University and University of Cassino, and was a 2011 Mosse-Friends Fellow. He is a member of the editorial board of Mondo contemporaneo. His research examines nationalism, Nazism, racism and the history of historiography. He is the author of the book George L. Mosse, l'Italia e gli storici (FrancoAngeli, Milan, 2010) and is currently working on two monographs on nationalism and fascism and on the myth of Rome in fascist Italy.
Mingcong Bai, Mosse Peer Advisor
Currently a senior, Mingcong Bai is a double major in History and Russian Language. Mingcong has a strong interest in personal perspectives and oral histories of social, political, and economic reforms in Socialist countries in the 1980s – especially in the cases of former Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Outside of history, he also participates in free and open source software development, translates software applications and lyrics, and preparing food with friends. Mingcong plans to further focus his studies in graduate school.
Joe Banin, George L. Mosse Modern Jewish History Fellow
Joe Banin is a PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He completed his BSc in Government and History at the London School of Economics in 2010, and his MPhil in American History at the University of Cambridge in 2016. For his MPhil research, he examined the response of the American media to the Holocaust through the eyes of the liberal weekly newspaper, the Nation. His current research interests include American Jewish history, U.S. foreign policy, Zionism, and Neoconservatism.
Boaz Berger, Exchange Fellow (2019-2020)
Boaz Berger is currently finishing his M.A at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he also completed his B.A studies in history. His main field of interest is British cultural history during the long 18th century. In his M.A research he examines how the War of American Independence was visually depicted in England. In his PhD he will examine how British politicians embraced a modern visual representation of "chivalry" in order to cope with the crisis at the turn of the 19th century.
Amos Bitzan, Mosse Faculty Exchange Fellow (2019-2020)
Amos Bitzan is an assistant professor in the Department of History and Center for Jewish Studies at UW-Madison. He teaches courses in modern Jewish history, the history of antisemitism and anti-Judaism, and the history of the Holocaust. His first book project is entitled Discipline in the Age of Pleasure: The Origins of Jewish Studies in Nineteenth-Century Germany. It points to the rise of new reading practices among Jewish men and women in the late 1700s and early 1800s as an origin point for the academic field of Wissenschaft des Judentums, arguing that the field’s founders envisioned it as a solution to the problems they saw in both the state of rabbinic study and in the novel reading modes linked to the growth of Yiddish and German imaginative literature and pleasure reading in Ashkenaz.
Tom Eshed, HUJI PhD student 2020-2024
Tom Eshed is a PhD candidate in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He completed an MA in Jewish History in 2020 and his BA in History in 2017 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His MA explored the cooperation between the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Authority, during the 1950s. His dissertation will expand this research to consider the intersection between Israeli diplomacy and Holocaust Memory during the Cold War. He is particularly interested in the influence of cultural diplomacy on transnational memory and the impact foreign relations have on national narratives.
Michal Friedman, George L. Mosse HUJI Coordinator
Michal Friedman is the 2018-2019 George L. Mosse Fellow to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is currently working on her M.A at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she also completed her B.A studies in history and received the Dean's and Rector's Awards in the Humanities graduating summa cum laude. Her main field of interest is European cultural history, and most especially the history of food. Her paper on the rise and fall of the peacock as food in Europe from a cultural, religious and economical perspectives won the Hed Award for excellent papers focusing on the early modern period.
Yuval Gabay, HUJI MA student (2019-2021)
Yuval Gabay is currently working toward obtaining his B.A. in History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In autumn 2019, he is going to start his M.A. at the same university, where he will focus on the Middle Ages in Europe. He is the 2019-2020 George L. Mosse Fellow to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For two years, he has been serving as an editor for the students’ journal of Institution of History’s, Hayo Haya (Once Upon a Time). He is interested particularly in religious history, and in how a growing society has a bigger appetite for spiritual food, as well as for actual food.
Ezra Gerard, George L. Mosse LGBTQ+ History Fellow
Ezra Gerard received his BA in history from the University of Michigan in 2014. He is now a first year PhD student in History and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Broadly speaking, his research concerns transgender history in the United States and Germany in the mid-twentieth century. Ezra is particularly interested in examining the prominence of the “wrong body” narrative in mass media representations of trans identity and in the role of personal narrative and memory in the construction of trans histories.
Ethell Gershengorin, George L. Mosse Modern Jewish History Fellow
Ethell Gershengorin is a first-year Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She completed her B.A. in International Relations at Boston University. Her primary area of interest is the intersection of class, religion and gender identities under the Soviet regime and the ways in which everyday Soviet citizens, especially Jewish women, adapted to and confronted policies. Her research will examine Jewish women’s resistance to and disruption of Soviet policies and norms through art and material culture.
Chad S.A. Gibbs, George L. Mosse Modern Jewish History Fellow
Chad S.A. Gibbs is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He completed an MA in history at the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 2016 and his BA in history at the University of Wyoming in 2013. His dissertation research uses testimonial sources to explore spatial and social networks of resistance between prisoners inside the Nazi extermination camp Treblinka. He is particularly interested in how inmates used preexisting relationships as well as new bonds formed on work details in order to build trust, gain access to space, and conceal their plans for revolt.
Taili Hardiman, HUJI MA student (2020-2022)
Taili Hardiman is currently completing her B.A in History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her main interests are in the histories of science and visual culture in modern Europe. Continuing onto an M.A in History, she will focus on the production of knowledge, observational practices, and disciplinary development of the social sciences in 19th Britain. Taili is the 2020-2021 George L. Mosse Fellow to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is currently the co-editor of ‘Hayo Haya - Student Journal for History’ and an archive assistant for the ‘Einstein Papers Project’.
Claire Hitter, George L. Mosse Program Undergraduate Intern (2018-2020)
Claire Hitter is currently working on her B.A. in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Having recently studied European Jewish history she has developed an interest in the cultural expressions of Judaism. She is especially fascinated by individual stories and has enjoyed the opportunity to write biographical essays for classes. Claire has received Dean’s List recognition for three consecutive semesters and is excited to develop her interests and uncover fascinating stories in her position as the George L. Mosse Department of History Undergraduate Intern.
Svea Larson, George L. Mosse European Cultural History Fellow
Svea Larson is a first-year Ph.D. student in the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She completed her B.A. in History and French at Pacific University in Oregon. Her research interests focus on immigration, gender, and material transfer in the early half of the Twentieth century, and is interested in Northern Europe and France. She has previously completed research at Uppsala University in Sweden on immigration and return migration to and from the United States.
Abigail Lewis, George L. Mosse European Cultural History Fellow
Abigail Lewis is a PhD candidate in European History at UW-Madison. She completed her M.A in History at UW in 2014. She received her BA in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2012. She is the 2018-2019 recipient of the JB and Maurice C. Shapiro Fellowship at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Her work combines political and cultural history with visual studies, art, and public history. She is currently completing her dissertation, entitled “The Collaborationist Eye” which tells the history of photographic production, circulation, and display during the Nazi occupation of France and under the Vichy Regime. She is currently expanding this research to consider the relationship between images and antisemitism and the role of photography in constituting collective memories of the Holocaust in France. In 2018, she taught a course as the George L Mosse Teaching Fellow, called “Picturing History: Visual Culture and Memory in Modern Europe.”
Aly Long, Mosse Peer Advisor
Aly Long is one of our undergraduate program’s Mosse Peer Advisors. She is a senior majoring in History with certificates in French and European Studies. Her research centers on Eastern Europe in the early 20th century with a strong interest in the Baltic Region, specifically interwar independent and Soviet-occupied Lithuania. Besides history, Aly has a passion for international culture and travel, having recently returned from London where she worked as an intern for the Polish Cultural Institute. She also enjoys freelance writing and going on road trips with her friends.
Alice Coulter Main, George L. Mosse European Cultural History Fellow
Alice Coulter Main is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin Madison. She received her M.A. in History from UW Madison in 2018; her thesis was entitled “Sexing the Terror: The Jeunesse Dorée and the Fall of the Parisian Jacobin Club (1794)”. She holds a B.A. from the University of California Berkeley in History and French. Her work focuses on the French Revolution, particularly the role of gender and sexuality in counter-revolutionary critiques of republicanism. She also writes about representations of the Revolution in nineteenth-century Academic art and art institutions. Her adviser is Prof. Suzanne Desan.
Nick O'Connell, George L. Mosse Program Undergraduate Intern (2019-2020)
Nick is currently working on his B.A. in History and International Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Born and raised in Italy, Nick developed an interest for 20th Century European History and is particularly fascinated by the rise of Italian Fascism and the insurgency campaigns of Italian partisans. This fall, he will work on his senior thesis with Professor Patrick Iber, focusing on the methodology of analyzing current events in an historical perspective. As a member of the George L. Mosse Program, Nick is thrilled to further explore European modern history.
Kayci Olson Harris, Mosse Teaching Fellow
Kayci Olson Harris is a Ph.D. Candidate in European History at UW-Madison. She received her M.A. in History from UW in 2015 and an M.A. in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago in 2013. She completed her B.A. in History and French at the University of Georgia in 2012. Her work examines the Cold War through shifting cultural and political relations between France and the Soviet Union. She is currently writing her dissertation, “Pas de deux: Ballet exchanges and Franco-Soviet cultural interaction in the 1950s-70s,” which explores how notions of gender, aesthetics, consumer culture, and ideology shaped Cold War divisions. Her work seeks to integrate a grassroots perspective into transnational history by analyzing how French and Soviet journalists, performers, audience members, and others made sense of renewed cultural interaction in 1953.
Samson Olanrewaju, Exchange Fellow (2020-2022)
Samson Olanrewaju is a PhD candidate in the Department of Classical and Ancient Near Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on the literary growth of ancient Israelite historiography, the Pentateuch, and the Hebrew Bible within the general context of the Ancient Near Eastern world. He is especially interested in the Deuteronomistic History and David’s place in the development of ancient Israelite royal ideologies in the Hebrew Bible. In his dissertation, he provides a source- and redaction- critical analysis of the literary growth of the Davidic oracle in 2 Samuel 7:1–17 and its interaction with other passages in the books of Kings.
Stefania Ragaù, Mosse-Friends of UW Libraries Fellow (2020-2021)
Stefania Ragaù earned her PhD in contemporary history at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa with a work on the flowering of the Jewish utopian novels in relation to the emergence of Zionism. In her challenging studies on Jewish utopias, she deals with the secularization of Jewish thought between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, analyzing the influence of a modern messianism through which Jewish nationalism configured itself as a secular religion. These projects led Ragaù to Mosse's works. She is currently developing her studies along two further lines of research, which is related to the encounter between the European philosophy of history and Jewish thought: one line is the Jewish utopian imagination beyond Zionism, while the other is the historical reconstruction of the Nationalhumanismus, a concept which seems to have been created by Max Brod and Felix Weltsch in the so-called “enge Prager Kreis”. Finally, she is currently drafting her first monograph on the Jewish utopian novels before Theodor Herzl's Altneuland (1902).
Emma Soderholm, George L. Mosse Program Undergraduate Intern (2020-2022)
Emma Soderholm is a sophomore currently working towards her B.A. in History and International Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Planning on studying in Berlin, Germany during the fall of 2020, Emma is interested in the development of Human Rights during the Cold War. She enjoys discussions on the role of international organizations in fostering both cooperation and contention during the Cold War. Emma is particularly interested in hearing the stories of individuals whose lives have been impacted by events in history, and she looks forward to working as the Undergraduate Intern in the George L. Mosse Program.
James Ungureanu, George L. Mosse Historian in Residence
James C. Ungureanu is an intellectual historian with a particular interest in the history of religious thought. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland and in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Queensland, an M.A. in the History of Christianity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and a double B.A. in Religious Studies and Philosophy from the University of California-Davis. He also teaches broadly, from introductory courses to the Bible to the history of science and religion. His first book, Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition: Retracing the Origins of Conflict, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, traces the origins, development, and popularization of the “conflict thesis,” the idea that science and religion are irrevocably at odds.