History Department

History is not a body of facts to be transferred temporarily from the erudition of a professor to the memory of a student. It is a way of understanding the whole of the human condition as it has unfolded in time. History is one of the largest departments at Wesleyan and is home to a distinguished group of teacher-scholars whose work ranges from the medieval to the post-modern, from the Middle East to the Midwest, from gender and sexuality to science and economics, from micro-history to world history.  Faculty in History have been at the forefront of interdisciplinary work and program building at Wesleyan for over five decades.

Wesleyan recognizes outstanding teaching with Binswanger Prizes for Excellence in Teaching awarded

Erik Grimmer-Solem, Associate Professor of History

Erik Grimmer-Solem joined the Wesleyan faculty in 2002. He has a DPhil from Oxford University, an MPhil from Cambridge University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a BA from Brigham Young University. He has received awards and fellowships from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, and the University of Chicago.

His teaching and scholarly interests are in German history, economic and social history, and the history of economic thought. He is particularly interested in the relationship between social science and policy. His courses include surveys of economic history, modern German history, and College of Social Studies history tutorials, as well as seminars on the welfare state, the Weimar Republic, and the Holocaust. In 2005 he received Wesleyan’s Carol A. Baker Memorial Prize for excellence in teaching and research.

He is the author of The Rise of Historical Economics and Social Reform in Germany, 1864–1894, published by Oxford University Press. His scholarly articles have appeared in such journals asthe Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, German History, and the Journal of World History. A second book, Empire of the Mind: German Political Economy and the World, 1880–1918, will appear in 2014.
 

From our Department

Igler ’88 Writes History of Pacific World Travels During 1770s–1840s

Daynard ’79 Writes First Novel, Set During the American Revolution

Laurie Nussdorfer, Professor of History and Letters, is appointed to the William F. Armstrong Professorship, established in 1921 with a gift from Armstrong’s estate.