403A Wimberly Hall
UW-L Dept of History, 1725 State St
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-785-6798 Fax: 608-785-8370
abeaujot@uwlax.edu

Ph.D. University of Toronto, 2008
B.A. University of Western Ontario, 2001

I am a public historian who works with classes to mount local history projects. Some examples of past
projects are:

• “If you Can’t Stand the Heat: The history of the kitchen,” an exhibit at the Laurentian University
Archives
• “Music to our Ears: The history of sound and instruments in Simcoe County,” an exhibit at
Simcoe County Museum
• Balade Blanche, a historical ghost tour put on in Pontlevoy France

Through these projects students develop skills in public relations, grant writing, curatorship, and
artistic design, which help them use their historical knowledge beyond university walls. Above
all I try to foster a cooperative classroom environment, encouraging students to work together
to mount large projects in partnership with local community organizations. In addition to public
history I have taught in a variety of other fields including British history, colonial history, women’s/
gender history, and visual/material culture.

My research focuses on the ways in which fashionable objects reveal the beliefs, values and prejudices of Victorians in Britain. My first book, Victorian Fashion Accessories, argues that gloves, fans, parasols and vanity sets were much more than finishing touches of a woman’s wardrobe—accessories helped a woman fashion her identity. I am currently working on a second volume titled Adorning the Male. In this work questions of trend, fashion, and style are granted special attention as social, economic, and political indicators. By taking a close look at the historical context surrounding fashionable men’s objects, with an eye towards how they were produced, marketed and used, this book will uncover the ways in which accessories reflected (and sometimes helped to create) wider societal developments in areas of gender, labor, identity politics, race and democracy.

I was born and have spent most of my life in Ontario, Canada. Since becoming an academic I have
enjoyed traveling, researching, and working in Europe. In my free time I stay active, walking and biking in the summers and snow shoeing and skiing in the winters.

403H Wimberly Hall
UW-L Dept of History, 1725 State St
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-785-8359 Fax: 608-785-8370
dbuffton@uwlax.edu

Ph.D. History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1987
M.A. History, State University of New York-Binghamton, 1981
B.A. History, Ithaca College, 1979

I teach courses on French History, Chinese History, Asian and European surveys, and Peace and War. My World History courses have focused on two themes: Human Rights and Peace & War.
My research interests relate broadly to the ways war and peace affect societies. I have studied military occupation in France in the 20th century, the uses of propaganda, women and war, the ways we remember war--often quite differently from what actually happened!--, and peace activism in the US. Currently I am studying the work of the Red River Valley Peace Workers, a peace organization active in the 1980s. I am especially interesting in how war affects noncombatants and how militarism becomes a part of the culture of a society.

403D Wimberly Hall
UW-L Dept of History, 1725 State St
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-785-8360 Fax: 608-785-8370
mchavalas@uwlax.edu

Ph. D. History, University of California at Los Angeles, 1988
M.A. History, University of California at Los Angeles, 1982
B.A., California State University-Northridge, 1975

In addition to world history, my courses include, Ancient Mesopotamia (Iraq), Egypt, Israel, Turkey (Anatolia), Iran before Islam, Greece, Rome, Women in the Ancient World, six semesters of the Akkadian language (Babylonian), two semesters of the Sumerian language, and a new course on ancient Syria. I deal with a 'bare bones' investigation of primary sources in all of my classes, in the attempt to show the student just how ancient history is reconstructed by the scholar.

My research in the past decade has been concerned with interconnections in the ancient Mesopotamia with outlying areas (Anatolia, the Aegean, Iran, Egypt, and Syro-Palestine, and even the Adriatic). I have also focused on issues such as gender constructs in the ancient Near East and Mesopotamian historiography.

I am family oriented, happily married to Kimberlee, along with our six children. I serve in a number of capacities at my church (First Evangelical Free Church, Onalaska), primarily teaching about the historical context of the Bible. In my spare time, I am a hopeless baseball fanatic, bleeding Dodger blue.

403N Wimberly Hall
UW-L Dept of History, 1725 State St
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-785-8361 Fax: 608-785-8370
jgrider@uwlax.edu

Ph.D. History, University of Colorado, 2006
M.A. University of San Diego, 1996
B.A. University of California, Santa Cruz, 1992

I teach a variety of courses on global history and United States history here at UW-L.  When teaching history to students I attempt to instill a sense that the past is about real people whose beliefs, actions, and daily lives have influenced and shaped the world.  I also attempt to show students that history is more than a story about the powerful few, and that everyday people, who may seem powerless, play a major role in shaping the past and the future.  For this reason, in addition to teaching General Education courses in global history, I teach courses in United States labor and working class history, Native American history, history of piracy, maritime history, immigration history, and the history of the American West. By uncovering the role played by the often nameless and faceless masses, students come to realize that they too are a part of history and that their decisions today will affect future generations.

 

USM Steamship Pacific (1849)

My research primarily examines how work and labor identity changed aboard American merchant vessels in the Pacific during the nineteenth century.  Sailors built a maritime community and culture in the Atlantic that promoted masculinity and ethnic and racial tolerance among seamen. During the nineteenth century, sailors encountered Pacific Islanders and Asians who quickly sought to enter the maritime labor community aboard foreign vessels.  New to the maritime world developed in the Atlantic, Pacific peoples brought their own cultural values and masculine identities onto ships that did not always mesh well with traditional maritime customs and work habits.  Some Pacific peoples, such as Polynesians, Micronesians, and Melanesians, fit well into the maritime community, while other Pacific peoples, like the Chinese, did not. I argue that the influx of Pacific peoples into the maritime labor force during the second half of the nineteenth century, combined with advances in maritime technologies forced sailors to reevaluate and alter the way they perceived themselves and their labor. Sailors, once tolerant and accepting, became intolerant and abusive towards Asians and refused to serve with them aboard ships and denied them membership in maritime unions. Ultimately, racial segregation harmed seamen by pitting sailors against each other, allowing employers to exploit worker divisiveness.

403G Wimberly Hall
UW-L Dept of History, 1725 State St
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-785-8348 Fax: 608-785-8370
jhollenback@uwlax.edu

PH.D. History, UCLA, 1988
M.A. History, University of Oklahoma, 1975
B.A. History, University of Chicago, 1970

Teaching and Research Interests: History of religions (Comparative religions)

403E Wimberly Hall
UW-L Dept of History, 1725 State St
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-785-8355 Fax: 608-785-8370
giguchi@uwlax.edu

Ph.D. History, University of California at San Diego, 2006
M.A. East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara, 1997
B.A. Religious Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara, 1990

I was born in San Diego, and grew up near the Mexican border. My dad farmed a piece of land for years that was literally on the fence separating the two countries. We later moved north, to Chula Vista, which is between south San Diego and downtown San Diego. After transferring to the University of California at Santa Barbara from a community college in Chula Vista, I earned a BA in Religious Studies. I focused especially on Asian religions, and in particular Japanese religions because I kept taking the courses of an interesting professor of French nationality whose area of concern was the religions of Japan. He also encouraged me to begin reading thinkers such as Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Gilles Deleuze, and Michel Foucault. After graduating, and four years of teaching English at offices, factories, research facilities, and a government ministry in the greater Tokyo region, I returned to California, and soon – after taking a six-month trip around the world – I earned an MA at UC Santa Barbara in East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies. My thesis was on a 1924 modernist novel by Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, and it dealt with the political significance of intersections of religious symbolism, literary masochism, and representations of Asian and Western civilization in the context of modern Japan. I followed this by earning a Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego in History, where my dissertation focused on Nichirenism, a nationalist and pro-imperialism, modern Buddhist movement in Japan from circa 1900 to 1947. In the course of my research I developed expertise in centuries of Buddhist thought and practice in Japan and the rest of Asia. I also spent two years doing archival research and preliminary writing at the University of Tokyo, and I completed minor fields of study in comparative fascism, and globalization/imperialism at UCSD.

My scholarly interests include: · Modernity (defined as the post-Enlightenment, post-industrial revolution world characterized by economic, political, social, and cultural relationships and interconnections that more-or-less encompass the planet, as well as a predominant temporality of progress or development as accumulation of capital, knowledge, territory, and/or power) · Capitalism · Imperialism · Nationalism · Ideology · Literature, Art, and Film · The Bildungsroman Form (as an allegory of national and other forms of development) · Built Environments · Culture (especially a dialectic between culture-as-process, which I call “morph culture,” and culture-as-essence, which I call “mort culture”) · Continental Philosophy (by which I mean, for example, Nietzsche, Marx, Walter Benjamin, Georg Lukács, and a variety of other more recent thinkers of various nationalities) · Orientalism and Pan-Asianism · Asian Religions, Global Religions, and the History of the Academic Study of Religions · Radical and Reactionary Social Movements · Historiography · Conceptual History · Material History · Culinary Culture and History

401A Wimberly Hall
UW-L Dept of History, 1725 State St
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-785-8358 Fax: 608-785-8370
clee@uwlax.edu

Ph.D. History, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1978
M.A. History, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1974
B.A. History and Political Science, University of Iowa, 1972

Professor of History
Chair, Department of History
Executive Director, UW-L Oral History Program
Member, UW-L River Studies Program

For many years now my research interests have been best expressed using oral history methods, focusing on ecological themes. I have conducted significant oral history studies of the Kickapoo River and upper Mississippi River watersheds. The Kickapoo project was in partnership with the Kickapoo Valley Reserve and the La Farge, WI. public schools. Two Mississippi River projects resulted in two series of oral history radio programs on WLSU, Wisconsin Public Radio. Currently, I am working with Troy Reeves, of the UW-Madison Oral History Program, on a state-wide project, "Stories from the Land: Wisconsin Environmental Oral Histories."  

I have been fortunate to blend some of my academic and personal interests. My wife, Linda, and I have a small orchard of heirloom apples. I am a founding board member of the Mississippi Valley Conservancy, a highly successful regional land trust. I play mandolin in a string band, "Grand Picnic," specializing in old time American regional music.

403F Wimberly Hall
UW-L Dept of History, 1725 State St
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-785-8344 Fax: 608-785-8370
jlonghurst@uwlax.edu
Faculty Web Page

Ph. D. History & Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, 2004
M.S. History & Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, 1998
B.A., U.S. History, Linfield College, 1994

     Here at UW-L, I teach a variety of courses reflecting my interests in global environmental history, the history of 20th century America, social movements in post-war America, and public and policy history. My degree is in history and policy, a scholarly approach that is intended to produce historical research that can be useful in understanding public institutions and policy choices in the present. As such, I often discuss the links between past and present in my classroom, something that policy analysts call "path dependency" but that I like to call "history". This is particularly evident in my classes on environmental history and environmental policy. I have also published articles on teaching with technology, and work with the McNair Scholars program at UW-L as an advanced standardized testing specialist and member of the advisory commitee.

 

GASP mascots in 1970: Dirty Gertie and Dirty Dick, the Poor Polluted Chick

     While I am broadly trained in U.S. history and politics, I have special interests in public policy, urban history, civil society and environmental politics. My completed research project focused on the rise of local environmental organizing in the United States and Pittsburgh in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I used one environmental organization, Pittsburgh's Group Against Smog and Pollution or GASP, as a case study of the impact of new federal legislation and judicial philosophy on local organizing, implementation and enforcement. This resulted in the publication, in 2010, of my book Citizen Environmentalists. Since the completion of that book, I have begun work on my next research project, examining the failures of practical bicycle commuting in U.S. cities in the 20th century, and the difficulties faced by federal and state policies intended to promote bicycle usage in the 21st century.
     I volunteer my time with the McNair Scholars program on campus, teaching a GRE prep seminar and advising grad-school-bound students. As the advisor for UW-L's newly-installed chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the national history honorary society, I enjoy working with history majors and minors, as well as those who are interested in promoting scholarship, research, and collegiality here on campus.
     I enjoy running and road cycling, and as a recreational triathlete I am ambitious but happily mediocre. I often spend summers in upstate New York or on Lake Superior.

403B Wimberly Hall
UW-L Dept of History, 1725 State St
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-785-8347 Fax: 608-785-8370
mlybeck@uwlax.edu

BA Augsburg College History and English
MA University of Minnesota Library Science
MA University of Arizona History
PhD University of Michigan History (2007)

     I focus my teaching on the recovery of individual agency in history. My hope is allow students to see history as a dynamic process influenced by the actions of ordinary people and as a stubborn presence shaping every individual life. I want students to develop historical thinking skills through encountering the struggles of individuals to defend, change, or simply survive the historical conditions into which they were born. Narrative sources like novels and film provide an exciting way for students to enter into historical experiences. I also believe in the power of writing as a form of thinking. My students can expect to do as much informal and formal writing as class and grading time allows.

     My research mirrors my teaching in using narrative and anthropological models and tools to probe the intimate and political decisions that individuals make. Critical use of the concept of identity as collective social construction of self is especially useful in my research into female homosexuality in Europe in the period between 1890 and the 1930s. My work on Germany involves investigating the connections between emancipated women's sexual self constructions and the political issues and affiliations they pursued. My large question involves theorizing the interconnections between gender and sexuality at the level of individual experience using close readings of historical sources.

     I serve on the Board of the LGBT Center of the Seven Rivers Region and enjoy kayaking, biking, and other non-extreme outdoor sports. I try to get to Europe and especially Berlin whenever I can.

403J Wimberly Hall
UW-L Dept of History, 1725 State St
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-785-8349 Fax: 608-785-8370
vmacias-gonzalez@uwlax.edu

Ph.D. History, Texas Christian University, 1999
M.A. History, University of Texas at El Paso, 1995
B.A. Political Science, University of Texas at El Paso 1992

 

The Escandón y Barrón brothers, London, 1911. From left to right: Manuel Escandón y Barrón, marqués de Villavieja, founder of the Cercle de Polo de París. Colonel Pablo Escandón y Barrón, Chief of Staff of President Porfirio Díaz and governor of Morelos state. Eustaquio Escandón y Barrón, marqués de Barrón. Source: Manuel de Escandón y Barrón, Life has been good. Memoirs of the Marqués de Villavieja, Londres, Chatto & Windus, 1938, p. 218.

I joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in 2000 and was tenured and promoted in 2006. In addition to my teaching, advising, research, and service duties in the Department of History, I hold a joint appointment in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. I also direct the Institute for Latina/o and Latin American Studies and I coordinate the Eagle Mentoring Program, a retention initiative for underprivileged second-year students majoring in the College of Liberal Studies. I am firmly committed to affirmative activism.

My research interests focus broadly on gender, sexuality, and material culture of Mexico in the long nineteenth century. I am a specialist of the Porfirian age in Mexico (1876-1911) and my publications have analyzed the Mexican aristocracy, manuals of etiquette, portraiture, genealogy, consumption, and leisure. I am presently completing a monograph on the Mexican aristocracy. I have been involved in the development of Mexican LGBT history and have mentored graduate students in this emerging field.

On a more personal note, I was born in El Paso, Texas, but grew up in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. Whenever I am not teaching in La Crosse, you can probably find me in a used bookstore, an antique shop, or an archive in Mexico City. My partner and I are bibliophiles, enjoy period films, documentaries, cooking, and travel, and are involved in campus equity, inclusivity, social justice, education, and diversity issues.

403C Wimberly Hall
UW-L Dept of History, 1725 State St
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-785-8345 Fax: 608-785-8370
hmorrison@uwlax.edu

University of California, Santa Barbara, PhD History 2009
Harvard, MA Middle East Studies, 2002
University of California, Berkeley BA French 1999

     In my courses on the Middle East, I like to expose students to the diversity of a region of the world that is often reduced to simple stereotypes of camels, pyramids, deserts, and terrorists. A key component in my courses is critical discourse on the production of knowledge about the Middle East and Islam. I also like to take an interdisciplinary approach so that students explore the peoples, languages, cultures, and societies of the Middle East from a variety of disciplinary perspectives (politics, literature, film, and history).
     I am compelled by topics in history that give voice to actors that are often overlooked.

      My research interests focus primarily on children and childhood in modern Middle Eastern history. My book is the first of its kind to show that the creation of new social knowledge about childhood figured into the nation-building project in early twentieth century Egypt. I place the experiences of children (rather than the institutions built for children) at the center of my research. My current book project is an oral history of children of the Second Palestinian Intifada. I am also developing a future project on the Egyptian circus, using entertainment as a means to understanding the evolution of animal rights in Egypt.

     I am actively involved in the animal right's campaign in Egypt. Some of the activities include: being a pet escort for international pet adoptions; fostering cats; filing a law suit against pet shop abuse; filing a law suit against the poisoning of street dogs; and championing for the rights of Mouza the Giza Zoo chimp.
     I practice yoga, make an award-winning double-crust homemade apple pie, listen to many podcasts, and love walking. J'adore Paris.

In Egypt, Summer 2012.

403M Wimberly Hall
UW-L Dept of History, 1725 State St
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-785-8352 Fax: 608-785-8370
gpai@uwlax.edu

Ph.D. South & Southeast Asian Studies, University of California-Berkeley
M.A. South & Southeast Asian Studies, University of California-Berkeley
M.S. Education, California State University-Hayward
B.A. Education and English, Hunter College (C.U.N.Y.)

     My general field of research and teaching interests concern the political, social, and cultural history of seventeenth to twenty-first century South Asia, particularly India. My current book project focuses on the life of a monument in South India sponsored by people who migrated into the area and left their distinct cultural imprint. I explore the site’s history from the early modern to contemporary period through various perspectives, such as politics, religion, art history, literature, visual culture, and gender studies. This interdisciplinary approach also informs my teaching: in my courses about India, I teach through the lens of literary, historical, ethnographic, and cinematic texts.

     My work has been funded by UW-L Faculty Research Grant, UW-L International Development Funds, UW-L College of Liberal Studies Small Grants, American Association of University Women's American Dissertation Award, Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Abroad Award, Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities Dissertation Fellowship, Foreign Language & Area Studies Fellowships, and grants from UC Berkeley’s Center for South Asian Studies, Tamil Chair, Gender & Women’s Studies Department, and South & Southeast Asian Studies Department.
    
     At UW-L, I teach courses which aim to introduce general South Asian history to the non-specialist as well as focus on specific thematic topics, such as religion, politics, and gender in the early modern, colonial, and post-colonial contexts of South Asia.

     On a personal note, I am a native Californian who moved to Wisconsin recently. I enjoy working at UW-L: my colleagues are supportive and friendly, and the students are bright and hard-working. During my free time, I like to cook Indian food, read novels, do yoga, and explore new places.

403L Wimberly Hall
UW-L Dept of History, 1725 State St
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-785-8354 Fax: 608-785-8370
ssinclair@uwlax.edu

Ph. D. History, University of New Mexico, 1991
M.A. History, University of New Mexico, 1984
B.A. Spanish, Michigan State University, 1969

Teaching and Research Interests:
Middle Ages Renaissance
Ancient Greece & Rome
Early Modern Europe
Prehistoric American Southwest (Anasazi)

403K Wimberly Hall
UW-L Dept of History, 1725 State St
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-785-6799 Fax: 608-785-8370
ttrimmer@uwlax.edu

Ph.D. History, Northeastern University, 2007
M.A. History, Northeastern University, 2000
B.S. History and Politics, Drexel University, 1998

I was trained as a world historian, which means that my research focuses on how local, regional, and world-scale historical trends intersect and feed off of each other. Long-distance labor migration is the thing that most fascinates me as a historian -- it is a process that is simultaneously massive (millions of people emigrating each year) and intimately personal (each migrant, family, community having to figure out how to adjust to separation). My current research focuses on political struggles over immigration quotas, and labor migrants' wages and working conditions that took place in Singapore and the Malay Peninsula in the early 1900s. Why this part of the world? Three worldwide historical phenomena overlapped here -- the British Empire, the Indian immigrant labor diaspora, for-profit plantation-style agriculture -- making it an intriguing case study of the "bring in outsiders who will do the work" tactic that helped overseas empires function ca the 1500s-1900s. In Singapore and Malaya, creating workable immigration policies required complex negotiations among British colonial officials, local planters' association representatives, and Indian nationalists concerned about the perception of Indians as cheap, replaceable labor. Migration policymaking became a kind of arena where local (planters), regional (Indian nationalists), and empire-wide (British civil servants anxious to please superiors in Bengal and London) interests competed. To me, this is the lure of world history -- illustrating how the wider world can work its way into seemingly local issues. As a migration historian, I also have the responsibility to help readers understand the experiences and agendas of migrants in cases when they were not permitted to participate in the policymaking process themselves (as was the case in early 1900s Singapore and Malaya). This is another part of my job that keeps me going... (Quick Note: "the bring in outsiders..." term comes from the writings of an early 1900s British Empire scholar named Alleyne Ireland, who stars in a chapter of my in-progress book about the intellectual origins of restrictive migration policies. More soon...)

For me, teaching a history class means focusing on both historical content and the practical skills necessary to make sense of the knowledge about the past a person has gained. Here are some of the main skills I practice with my students: tracing connections and patterns of interactions over time and across geographical space; making meaningful historical comparisons; having an accurate command of the broad outlines of historical chronology and content; being able to use what is known about the historical context of a primary or secondary source and its author to draw appropriate conclusions; asking clear historical questions that can actually be answered; constructing evidence-based arguments about the past.

401B Wimberly Hall
UW-L Dept of History, 1725 State St
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-785-8350 Fax: 608-785-8370
viner.rebe@uwlax.edu

B.S. Art, Program Option, UW-La Crosse, 2008
Associate Degree, Medical Administrative Specialist, WTC, 1983

403I Wimberly Hall
UW-L Dept of History, 1725 State St
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-785-6476 Fax: 608-785-8370
jweiskopf@uwlax.edu

Ph. D. History, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Minneapolis, 2010
B.A. History and English, summa cum laude, Minor in Medieval Studies, Seattle University, Seattle, WA

Teaching and Research Interests: Public health, development, and governance in the history of colonial and postcolonial Africa. The videos below are from an oral history research trip I took to Tanzania in summer 2009.