The History Department hosts Wednesday Workshops several times throughout the semester to further scholarly dialogue among graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars. In the form of a brownbag lunch, the speaker presents their research-in-progress and then engages in a Q&A with the audience.
Workshops generally take place from 12:15 – 1:15 in the Wood Hall Basement Lounge. Please contact Kevin Feeney at kevin.feeney@uconn.edu if you are interested in presenting at or attending a Wednesday Workshop.
2026
SPRING
March 25
Tiraana Bains, History, Brown University, “The Science of Government and the Origins of British India, 1756-1858”
Sonal Singh, History, Delhi University, “Caricatures of an Empire: Revisiting the British Raj Through Satire”
February 18
Joey Rauschenberger, History, University of Heidelberg, “Street Arabism: Street children, inequality and urban modernity in Germany and Great Britain, ca. 1880-1939”
2025
FALL
November 19
Henry Snow, History, University of Connecticut, “‘Posterity Will Curse My Memory’: Enslaved Sailors, Terrified Merchants, and the Making of Rhode Island’s Revolution”
October 8
Jan Stievermann, History, University of Heidelberg, “Rediscovering James W.C. Pennington, Black Reformed Minister and Activist”
SPRING
April 23
Nicolas Martin-Breteau, History, Université de Lille, “Frontline Bodies. Sports and Black Struggles for Justice since the Late Nineteenth Century”
April 9
Eran Zelnick, History, California State University, “American Laughter, American Fury: Humor and the Making of a White Man’s Democracy, 1750-1850”
March 26
Wellington Castellucci Junior, History, Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia, “Whalemen go down from the North. The history of the North American whale hunt in the South Atlantic, especially along the Brazilian Coast, 1760 to 1850”
January 22
Fiona Vernal, History, UConn, “Archival Slivers and Side Glances: Uncovering Black Lives in Hartford”
2024
FALL
December 4
Hana Maruyama, History, UConn, “‘The Land Is Fenced’: The Role of Japanese American Incarcerated Labor in the Formation of Settler Property on Indigenous Lands”
November 4
Jesse Olsavsky, History, Duke University, “Frederick Douglass and the Trajectories of Pan-Africanism, 1876-1945”
October 23
Julio Vezub, History, CONICET, “Maps, sketches, and strategies for invading the Argentinian desert: Francisco Host’s explorations in Salta, Neuquén and Chaco, 1871-1886”
SPRING
April 17
Mars Plater, History, UConn, “Gardens of Pleasure and Profit: Commercial Green Spaces in New York City, 1800-1850”
March 20
Thomas Maulucci, History, UConn, “Selling the German Democratic Republic: DEFA’s ‘Foreign Ministry Films”
January 31
Katharine Beene, History, UConn, “Párliament na mBan as Political Satire and Conduct Manual in Late 17th-Century Ireland”
2023
FALL
November 15
Stephen Vider, History, UConn, “On Our Own: Psychiatric Deinstitutionalization and the Politics of Care”
October 18
Will Theiss, History, UConn, “Reading Wrong: Humanistic Failure and the Philosophy of Justus Lipsius (1547-1606)”
SPRING
April 19
Avery McGraw, History, UConn, “We of My Kind: Transnational Medical Discourse and Trans* Identity Formation in 1950s Italy”
March 29
Joel Blatt, History, UConn, “Remembering Vietnam”
2022
FALL
October 12
Alejandra Monti, Universidad Nacional de Rosario/ CONICET, “Technical Assistance as Strategy: The Ford Foundation’s Regional and Urban Planning in Argentina and Chile, 1960-1973″
September 28
Luke Reynolds, History, UConn, “Who Owned Waterloo? Battle, Memory, and Myth in British History, 1815-1852″
SPRING
April 27
David Evans, History, UConn, “Did the United States Really Go to War in Afghanistan?”
April 6
Anna Kittredge, History, UConn; Adam Brookes, novelist and former BBC correspondent, “Writing About Espionage”
2021
FALL
December 8
Christopher Clark, History, UConn, “Global Capitalism Meets Settler Colonialism: The Wyoming Range War of the Early 1890s”
November 10
Peter Zarrow, History, UConn, “Abolishing Boundaries: Global Utopias in the Formation of Modern Chinese Political Thought, 1880-1940”
October 13
Bradley Simpson, History, UConn, “Using E-Reader Platform ‘Perusall’ for Teaching”
Victor Zatsepine, History, UConn, “Zoom, Zoom, Zoom! Hosting Your Own Meeting”
September 29
Cornelia Dayton, History, UConn, ” Lost Years Recovered: John Peters and Phillis Wheatley Peters in Middletown”
SPRING
April 7
Daniel Hershenzon, LCL, UConn, “Islamic Institutions and Slaves’ Collective Action in 18th Century Spain”
2020
FALL
December 2
Joseph McAlhany, History, UConn, “An Irysheman Lost & Found”
September 30
Walter Woodward, History, UConn and State Historian of Connecticut, “Creating Connecticut: Critical Moments That Shaped a Great State.”
SPRING
February 26
Jason Chang, History & Director of AAASI, UConn, “Connecticut’s Tobacco Valley: Imperialism, Migration, and Internal Colonization”
March 25
Tom Balcerski, History, Eastern Connecticut State University, “Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King”
April 1
Jonathan Michaels, History, UConn-Hartford, “The Liberal Dilemma: The Pragmatic Tradition in the Age of McCarthyism”