Wisconsin School of French History (1985-)

Organizational Committee:

Jim Coons
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Skye Doney
George L. Mosse Program

Katie Jarvis
University of Notre Dame

Ethan Katz
University of California Berkeley

Emma Kuby
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abigail Lewis
Council of European Studies, Temple University

Terrence Peterson
Florida International University

For nearly 40 years, the History Department at UW-Madison has cultivated a Wisconsin School of French History, due in large part to the scholarly contributions and mentorship of Suzanne Desan, Laird Boswell, and Mary Louise Roberts. As advisors and scholars, they have not only trained 32 doctoral students but have also authored seminal works that are considered classics in their fields. Beyond academia, their influence has also extended through dynamic teaching, public lectures, media appearances, and international initiatives in the US and Europe. This conference aims to celebrate their achievements and their collective impact during their combined 93 years at the university.

In keeping with their research contributions and the broader Wisconsin Idea, the two-day conference will feature both academic and non-academic presentations by alumni in French and European history. Panels will showcase the diverse career paths and intellectual contributions fostered by the Wisconsin School of French History, highlighting its lasting influence on the discipline and beyond.

Speakers include recent graduates as well as those who began their careers in the 1990s and early 2000s under the mentorship of Suzanne, Laird, and Lou. The gathering not only honors their significant contributions to the department and university but also serves as a testament to their extensive publication record, teaching achievements, and service to the academic community. Moreover, participants will assess the current state of modern European history and the study of European empires, affirming the ongoing relevance and legacy of the Wisconsin School of French History.

Read full conference description here.

Photos from the event.

Conference report: Jim Coons, “Here Are the People: The Scholarly Empathy of Laird Boswell, Suzanne Desan, and Mary Louise Roberts.”

Laird Boswell, Suzanne Desan, Mary Louise Roberts

Laird Boswell is a historian of Modern Europe, especially France, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His 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. He has also undertaken extensive work in quantitative and oral history. Boswell’s first book focused on peasant communism in France. He is currently 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 his work in the History Department, he has directed the University of Wisconsin Center for European Studies and has served as director of the UW study abroad program in Aix-en-Provence, France.

Suzanne Desan’s general field of study is early modern Europe, with a focus on early modern France and the French Revolution. Her research and teaching interests include popular politics and political activism, especially during the French revolutionary and Napoleonic era; gender; family; the Enlightenment; the transnational circulation of ideas, people, and practices; early modern European popular culture and religion; historical methods and social theory. Her books include Reclaiming the Sacred: Lay Religion and Popular Politics in Revolutionary France (1990); The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France (2004); and (as a co-editor) The French Revolution in Global Perspective (2013). To reach a wide audience, with the Great Courses she has produced a 48-lecture series entitled, Living the French Revolution and the Age of Napoleon. Her current project examines the October Days uprising of 1789 during the French Revolution.

Mary Louise Roberts’s specialization is women and gender; France; and the Second World War. Her books include Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-De-Siècle France (2002); What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France (2013); D-Day through French Eyes (2014) and Sheer Misery: Soldiers in Battle in WWII (2021). Her most recent book examines the corporeal experiences of the soldiers who fought in Belgium, France, and Italy during the last two years of the Second World War. For the soldiers who fought, the war was above all about their bodies. Relying on diaries and memoirs, Sheer Misery brings to life such visceral sense memories as the smell of corpses, the blandness of K-Rations and the horror of the “Screaming Meemies.”

Friday, 20 September 2024, 8:15-10:00 - Pyle Center, Room 209

7:45 – Breakfast available for conference participants

8:15 Conference welcome

Grant A. Nelsestuen, Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities, College of Letters & Sciences

Neil Kodesh, Chair, UW-Madison Department of History

8:30 Session I: War

David van der Linden, “Ending War: Transitional Justice in Early Modern France”

Mona Siegel, “Gisèle and Djamila: An Unexpected Sotry of Justice and Sisterhood During the Algerian War for Independence”

Abigail Lewis, “The Zucca Affair: Photography and the Memory of Collaboration in France”

John Boonstra, “Men at War? Gender, Masculinity, and Histories of Conflict between Scholarship and Teaching”

Chair: John Hall, Professor of US Military History, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Comment: David Harrisville, Learning Designer, Brown University

2024.09 - Grant Nelsestuen 200 — Grant Nelsestuen is Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities in the College of Letters & Science at the University of Wisconsin – Madison

Neil Kodesh is the Allan H. Selig Distinguished Leadership Professor and Chair of the Department of History. (Photo by Jeff Miller / UW–Madison)

2024.09 - HS - David van der Linden — David van der Linden is an Assistant Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. His research focuses on religious conflict, memory, and justice in early modern France.

2024.09 - HS - Mona Siegel-150 — Mona Siegel is a history professor at California State University, Sacramento. She attended UW from 1990-96, studying French history with Laird and Suzanne.

2024.09 - HS - Abigail Lewis-150 — Abigail Lewis is Executive Director of the Council of European Studies. She received her PhD in Modern European History in 2022 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

2024.09 - HS - John Boonstra-150 — John Boonstra is currently Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches modern European and Mediterranean, colonial, and gender history.

2024.09 - HS - John Hall-150 — John W. Hall is the inaugural holder of the Ambrose-Hesseltine Chair in U.S. Military History and a past president of the Society for Military History.

2024.09 - HS - David Harrisville-150 — David Harrisville is an independent scholar specializing in the history of modern Germany, the Third Reich, and the Second World War. He received his PhD in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2017.

Friday, 20 September 2024, 10:15-11:45 - Pyle Center, Room 209

10:15 Roundtable I: Historians in Public Service

Jillian Slaight, Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau (LRB)

Siobhan McGurk, Attorney at Fenwick & West in the Bay Area

Robert Christl, Program Director at Worker Justice Wisconsin

Franca Barricelli, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts

Moderator: Leslie Abadie, Department of History Department Administrator, University of Wisconsin-Madison

2024.09 - HS - Jillian Slaight-150 — Jillian Slaight conducts nonpartisan policy and history research at the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau (LRB), where she has worked since completing her PhD in 2017.

2024.09 - HS - Siobhan McGurk-150 — Siobhan McGurk is an attorney at Fenwick & West where she advises startups and emerging companies on corporate matters, including venture capital financing, capital markets, and mergers and acquisitions. In between deals, she does a range of pro bono work.

2024.09 - HS - Robert Christl — Robert Christl is the Program Director at Worker Justice Wisconsin, a worker center located in Madison.

2024.09 - HS - Franca Barricelli-150 — Franca Barricelli received her PhD in 1994 as a student of Suzanne Desan, in collaboration with Domenico Sella, in early modern Italian history. She is professor emerita of History at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts.

2024.09 - HS - Leslie Abadie-150 — Leslie Abadie was the Graduate Program Manager in the Department of History at UW from 2007-2023. She is currently the Department of History’s Department Administrator.

Friday, 20 September 2024, 13:00-14:30 - Pyle Center, Room 209

13:00 Session II: Intimacies, Otherings, and the State

Terrence Peterson, “Where ‘Undesirable’ and Empire Meet: The Rivesaltes Camp, 1938-1964”

Gillian Glaes, “Sally N’Dongo and the Reverberations of Empire”

Jordanna Bailkin ,”Love in the Time of Welfare” [Read by Richard C. Keller]

Chair: Richard C. Keller, Professor of the History of Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Comment: Ethan Katz, Associate Professor of History, University of California-Berkeley

2024.09 - HS - Terrence Peterson-150 — Terrence Peterson is Associate Professor of History at Florida International University. He works on modern Europe and European empires, with a focus on decolonization, migration, and warfare.

2024.09 - HS - Gillian Glaes-150 — Gillian Glaes taught modern European and global history at Carroll College before heading over to the University of Montana, where she serves as the Director of the Franke Global Leadership Initiative, an undergraduate certificate program in global leadership and experiential and interdisciplinary learning.

2024.09 - HS - Jordanna Bailkin-150 — Jordanna Bailkin is the Jere L. Bacharach Professor in International Studies and Professor of History in the Department of History at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is a scholar of Britain and the British Empire, with interests in decolonization, legal history, urban identity, gender history, and the history of material culture and emotions.

2024.09 - HS - Richard Keller-150 — Richard C. Keller is Robert Turell Professor and Chair of the Department of Medical History and Bioethics in the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Photo by Robert Streiffer.

Ethan Katz is Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

14:30-15:00 – Coffee Break

Friday, 20 September 2024, 15:00-17:00 - Pyle Center, Room 209

15:00 Roundtable II: Teaching Outside of the University

Eric O’Connor, History Teacher and Department Chair, The Seven Hills School in Cincinnati, Ohio

Hunter Martin, History Department Chair, St. Luke’s School in New Canaan, Connecticut

Grace Allen, History Teacher at the College Preparatory School in Oakland, California

Johanna Lanner-Cusin, Dean of Faculty at the College Preparatory School in Oakland, California

Moderator: Katherine Guenoun, Instructional Systems Designer, Appian Corporation

2024.09 - HS - Eric-OConnor-150 — Eric O’Connor is currently a history teacher and department chair at The Seven Hills School in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he has taught European and world history to high schoolers for the last seven years.

2024.09 - HS - Hunter Martin-150 — Hunter Martin is the History Department Chair and the Director of Summer Program at St. Luke’s School, a secular independent school in New Canaan, Connecticut for grades 5-12. He teaches courses in Honors Modern World History, Advanced European History, as well as interdisciplinary senior electives.

2024.09 - HS - Grace Allen-150 — Grace Allen teaches 9th-12th grade history at the College Preparatory School in Oakland, California. Her 12th grade seminar, “A Global History of Consumer Culture,” is the third permutation of the course she developed as a George L. Mosse Teaching Fellow in 2015.

2024.09 - HS - Johanna Lanner-Cusin-150 — Johanna Lanner-Cusin is currently the Dean of Faculty at College Preparatory School, an independent school in Oakland, CA. She is responsible for hiring, coaching, and supporting a faculty of 46 classroom teachers.

2024.09 - HS - Katherine Guenoun-150 — Katherine Guenoun focused on French Jewish history in nineteenth-century France in her PhD. She is currently Senior Instructional Systems Designer at Appian Corporation.

Friday, 20 September 2024, 17:00-18:00 - Pyle Center Reception, AT&T Lounge

Pyle Center Reception for the UW-Madison community: 17:00-18:00 (AT&T Lounge).

Saturday, 21 September 2024, 8:30-10:00 - Pyle Center, Room 213

7:45 – Breakfast available for conference participants

8:30 Session III: Gender

Holly Grout, “Liberty, Equality, Bardolatry: Brigitte Bardot and the Work of Celebrity in Fifth Republic France”

Kelly Jakes, “GI Jazz: Music and Power in Liberation France”

Javier Samper Vendrell, “Uncomfortable Topics, or How to Write the History of Intergenerational Intimacy”

Chair/Comment: Emma Kuby, Associate Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison

2024.09 - HS - Holly Grout-150 — Holly Grout is Professor of History at the University of Alabama. She is currently working on her third book, *Bébé: A Critical Biography of France’s Most Notorious “It Girl.”*

2024.09 - HS - Kelly Jakes-150 — Kelly Jakes is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the College of Charleston, where she teaches and researches in the areas of public address, rhetorical criticism, social movements, and popular culture.

2024.09 - HS - Javier Samper Vendrell-150 — Javier Samper Vendrell is Assistant Professor of German Studies and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on LGBTQ+ history, film, literature, and print culture in the early twentieth century.

2024.09 - HS - Emma Kuby-150 — Emma Kuby is Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. An intellectual, political, and cultural historian of modern Europe, she specializes in France and its empire.

Saturday, 21 September 2024, 10:15-11:45 - Pyle Center, Room 213

10:15 Session IV: Revolution

Patrick William Travens, “Race and Revolutionary Possibility in the Year II”

Alice Kwok, “The Norse Revolution in Nineteenth-Century France”

Michael Lynn, “Dream Readings, Tarot Cards, and Revolution”

Chair: Jim Coons, Associate Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Comment: Katie Jarvis, Associate Professor of History, University of Notre Dame

2024.09 - HS - Patrick-William Travens-150 — Patrick-William Travens is currently a dissertator entering his last year of writing. His dissertation, “Imperial Jacobins,” interrogates how the Haitian Revolution shaped French revolutionary politics in the metropolitan ports of Bordeaux, Brest, Nantes, and Rochefort.

2024.09 - HS - Alice Kwok-150 — Alice Kwok studied History at UW-Madison under the supervision of Suzanne Desan with the support of Lou Roberts and Laird Boswell. Her dissertation examined the role of Old Norse literary texts as objects of a new, reactionary fascination within French medieval studies during the long nineteenth century.

Michael Lynn is a Professor of History and Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities at Purdue University Northwest. He has published historical studies of physics, balloons, fireworks, vampires, palm reading, and spontaneous human combustion.

2024.09 - HS - Jim Coons-150 — Jim Coons is an Associate Professor of History at UW-Whitewater. He works on the political culture of Louis XIV’s early reign. Photo by Craig Schreiner.

2024.09 - HS - Katie Jarvis-150 — Katie Jarvis is a historian of France and Carl E. Koch Associate Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses on popular politics, broadly conceived, during the French Revolution.

Saturday, 21 September 2024, 13:00-14:30 - Pyle Center, Room 213

13:00 Roundtable III: Historians in the Wild

Alan Krinsky, Director of Research & Fiscal Policy at the Economic Progress Institute

Charlie Cahill, Naturalist

Sarah Sussman, Curator of the French and Italian collections at Stanford Libraries

Jody LePage, Author

Moderator: Conrad Allen, Manager of Volunteer Operations, American College of Chest Physicians

2024.09 - HS - Alan Krinsky-150 — Alan Krinsky is the Director of Research & Fiscal Policy at the Economic Progress Institute (EPI), a progressive, nonprofit, nonpartisan, research, education, and advocacy organization focused on state-level public policy in Rhode Island.

2024.09 - HS - Charlie Cahill-150 — Charlie Cahill completed his PhD in German history in 2015. Currently he spends the summer working as a naturalist on a non-profit ecotourism boat in Southeast Alaska, while doing boat delivery work in the winters.

2024.09 - HS - Sarah B Sussman-150 — Sarah Sussman is Curator of the French and Italian collections at Stanford Libraries and also serves as head of the team of Humanities and Area Studies librarians.

2024.09 - HS - Jody LePage-150 — Jody LePage is an independent author. After finishing an MA in French Language and Literature at UW-Milwaukee in 1985, she worked as a Lecturer in the French Department there for the next four years, then joined the UW-Madison French History program full-time, with the late Ed Gargan as advisor until his retirement in 1992.

2024.09 - HS - Conrad Allen-150 — Conrad Allen currently works as the manager of volunteer operations at the American College of Chest Physicians, a non-profit medical association in Chicago.

14:30-15:00 – Coffee Break

Saturday, 21 September 2024, 15:00-17:00 - Pyle Center, Room 213

15:00 Session V: Friends Across the Rhine

Kilian Harrer, “Sweetening the New Regime: Beekeeping and European Political Ecology, c. 1763–1815”

Erik Jensen, “(Pre)Occupied: A German Woman in France, 1941-1942”

Chad S.A. Gibbs, “Dirt, Sheer Misery, and Masculine Authenticity: What Mary Louise Roberts Taught Me About the Holocaust”

Tom Lekan, “Eurafrica: Wildlife, Colonialism, and the European Economic Community, 1957-1963”

Chair: George L. Mosse Program in History

Comment: David Ciarlo, Associate Professor of History, University of Colorado Boulder

2024.09 - HS - Kilian Harrer-150 — Kilian Harrer is a researcher at the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) in Mainz, Germany. Previously. In 2021, he completed a dissertation at UW–Madison on “Pilgrimage and Borders in Western Central Europe, c. 1770–1810.”

2024.09 - HS - Erik Jensen-150 — Erik Jensen is Associate Professor of History at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he teaches courses on German, European, and world history.

2024.09 - HS - Chad SA Gibbs-150 — Chad S.A. Gibbs is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Zucker/Goldberg Center for Holocaust Studies at the College of Charleston. He is a historian of the Holocaust particularly interested in resistance, oral history, and the legacies of genocide.

David Ciarlo is currently Associate Professor of Modern European History at the University of Colorado (Boulder), where he teaches European History, German History, and the History of Imperialism and Empire. David received his PhD from Wisconsin in 2003.

2024.09 - HS - Thomas Lekan-150 — Tom Lekan graduated from UW-Madison in 1999, where he focused on Central Europe, studied French history with Laird and Suzanne, and kept his “borderland” ties by focusing on the Rhineland for his dissertation. He is currently Professor of History and an affiliate in the School of the Earth, Ocean and Environment at the University of South Carolina.

Additional Attendees:

2024.09 - HS - Ethell Gershengorin-200 — Ethell Gershengorin is a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison specializing in Imperial Russian and Soviet History.

2024.09 - HS - Rob Lewis-200 — Rob Lewis is an associate professor of History at Cal Poly Pomona. At UW-Madison, Laird was his primary advisor and mentor.

Louise E. Robbins arrived in Madison in the fall of 1989 to begin graduate work in the History of Science Department. Robbins finished her dissertation in 1998 and left Madison in 2001.

Saturday, 21 September 2024, 17:00-18:00 - Pyle Center, Room 213

Closing Remarks:

Laird Boswell, Suzanne Desan, Mary Louise Roberts

Organizational Committee:

Laird Boswell, Suzanne Desan, Mary Louise Roberts

Friday, 20 September 2024, 8:15-10:00 - Pyle Center, Room 209

Friday, 20 September 2024, 10:15-11:45 - Pyle Center, Room 209

Friday, 20 September 2024, 13:00-14:30 - Pyle Center, Room 209

14:30-15:00 – Coffee Break

Friday, 20 September 2024, 15:00-17:00 - Pyle Center, Room 209

Friday, 20 September 2024, 17:00-18:00 - Pyle Center Reception, AT&T Lounge

Saturday, 21 September 2024, 8:30-10:00 - Pyle Center, Room 213

Saturday, 21 September 2024, 10:15-11:45 - Pyle Center, Room 213

Saturday, 21 September 2024, 13:00-14:30 - Pyle Center, Room 213

14:30-15:00 – Coffee Break

Saturday, 21 September 2024, 15:00-17:00 - Pyle Center, Room 213

Additional Attendees:

Saturday, 21 September 2024, 17:00-18:00 - Pyle Center, Room 213

Conference Sponsors: