Rudy J. Koshar
Professor of History, German, & Religious Studies

Email: rjkoshar@wisc.edu
Phone: (608)265-2578
Office: 4101 Mosse Humanities
Mailbox: 4020 Mosse Humanities

Curriculum Vitae: View PDF

Office Hours: TBA

Education: PhD: University of Michigan; MA: University of Michigan; BA: Michigan State

Bio Sketch:

My general field of study is modern German and European cultural, social, and intellectual history. Previous research included publications on the social roots of Nazism; the lower middle classes in European and German politics between the world wars; historic preservation and German national identity; German memory cultures from 1870 to 1990; the history of consumption; and the history of modern travel and leisure. My current research and graduate teaching focuses on the history of modern European political history in the broader context of European society and culture. My undergraduate teaching includes survey lectures on European cultural history from the French Revolution to the present, as well as more specialized courses on modern German history since 1870.

Research Interests:

Culture, urbanity, and society in late modern Germany and Europe; European literature and power; religious thought; memory and the built environment; history of travel; German political and social theory.

Selected Publications:

• Editor (with Leonard Kaplan), The Weimar Moment: Liberalism, Political Theology, and Law (Lexington Books, 2012)
• German Travel Cultures (Oxford: Berg, 2000)
• From Monuments to Traces: The Artifacts of German Memory, 1870-1990 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000)
• Germany’s Transient Pasts: Historical Preservation and National Memory in Twentieth Century Germany (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998)
• Social Life, Local Politics, and Nazism: Marburg, 1880-1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986)

Awards:

• Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award, UW-Madison, 2008-09
• John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
• German Marshall Fund of the United States Research Fellowship
• Jean Monnet Research Fellowship, European University Institute, Florence, Italy
• American Council of Learned Socieities Fellowship
• Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Professorship

Courses Taught:

Lecture Courses:

• History 120 - Europe and the Modern World 1815-Present
• History 410 - Modern Germany 1871-present
• History 415 - History of National Socialism
• History 470 - Religious Thought in Modern Europe - Syllabus 2009 (pdf)
• History 475 - European Social History, 1914 to Present - Syllabus 2012 (pdf)
• History 513 - European Cultural History, 1815-1870
• History 514 - European Cultural History 1870-present - Syllabus 2013 (pdf)

Undergraduate Seminars:

• History 600 - Advanced Seminar in History - Topics: “Christianity and Culture in Modern Europe”; “European Lives in the Twentieth Century”; "Religion and Politics in Modern Europe" Syllabus 2010 (pdf); "Fiction and Power in Modern Europe" Syllabus 2012 (pdf)

Graduate Courses:

• History 866 - Seminar in Social History of Modern Europe
• History 867 - Seminar in European Social and Intellectual History - Syllabus 2012 (pdf)
• History 891 - Proseminar in Modern European History: Central Europe