Modern History Colloquium
Modern History Colloquium is an occasional lecture series hosted at the Department of History. Speakers are usually visitors from other institutions who are invited to address any aspect of research in the Modern period (loosely defined, but usually comprising the period after ca. 1500 CE).
For upcoming Colloquium events and other events sponsored by the Department, see:
Colloquium presentations are free and open to the University community, and to the public at large.
Upcoming Modern History Colloquium Presentations (Spring 2026):
Friday January 23: "The Breach: Iran-Contra and the Assault on Modern Democracy"
Prof. Alan McPherson, Temple University
Friday February 13: "The End of Liberation: Instrumentalizing the German-Tanzanian Past, 1979鈥�1989"
Prof. Matthew Unangst, SUNY Oneonta
Recent Modern History Colloquium Presentations:
"Democracy, Truth, and Lies"
Prof. Sophia Rosenfeld, University of Pennsylvania, December 1, 2025
"The Dissertation: European Origins and Embedded Globalization"
Prof. Kevin Chang, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, November 11, 2025
"Slave Trading in the Civil War South鈥�
Prof. Robert Colby, University of Mississippi, September 15, 2025
"A Marvelous Foreshadowing鈥�: The Seventeenth-Century Dutch Slave Trade and Its Impact on North American Slavery"
Prof. Andrea Mostermann, University of New Orleans, March 25, 2025
"Slaves of Southern Carceral States: Coerced Labor, Sexual Violence, and Resistance on the Prison Plantation"
Prof. Robert Chase, Stony Brook University, March 14, 2025
"Oceanic Itinerants: Transformation and its Limits in the Early Modern Spanish Tuna Fisheries"
Prof. Molly Warsh, University of Pittsburgh, January 31, 2025
"When Natural Disasters Became National Disasters: Hurricane Camille Civil Rights and the Southern Strategy"
Prof. Andy Morris, Union College, November 18, 2024
"The Past, Present, and Future of Southern Plantations"
Prof. Whitney Stewart, University of Texas--Dallas, November 1, 2024
"Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942-2022"
Prof. Frank Trentmann, Birbeck College, University of London, April 22, 2024
"Question of Priorities? Rape and the U.S. Military Justice System during the Second World War"
Prof. Raymond Douglas, Colgate University, April 15, 2024
"Why They Gave: CARE and American Aid to Germany after 1945"
Dr. Maximilian Klose, Fellow at the German Historical Institute, Washington DC and Lecturer at the John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universit盲t Berlin, January 19, 2024
"Originalism and the Role of History in American Law"
Prof. Joshua Sellers, University of Texas (Law School), September 21, 2023
"Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom"
Prof. Kathryn Olivarius, Stanford University, October 27, 2023
"Patricide, Fratricide, and Betrayal: The Role of Parthia in the First War with Rome"
Prof. Nikolaus Overtoom, University of Washington, Pullman, September 15, 2023
"Is There a Women's History of Vatican I?"
Prof. Carol Harrison, University of Southern Carolina, March 9, 2022
"Facts and Narratives in the 1619 Project: The Ghosts of David Abraham"
Ruben Flores, University of Rochester, March 4, 2022
"The Transformation of the World: The Napoleonic Wars in Global Perspective"
Prof. Alexander Mikaberidze, 海角社区-Shreveport, Jan. 29, 2021
"Kant's Hottentots"
Martin Alexander Ruehl, University of Cambridge, Sept. 20, 2019
鈥淰isualizing Fascism: Japan鈥檚 War without Pictures鈥�
Julia Adeney Thomas, University of Notre Dame, Sept. 6, 2019
鈥淪ame-sex love in 1930s China鈥�
Prof. Peter Carroll, Northwestern University, April 5, 2019
鈥淛ubilant Empire: Festivals, Fireworks and Fealty in the Seventeenth-Century Spanish World鈥�
Rachael Ball, University of Alaska-Anchorage, March 15, 2019