History

History is a way of understanding the whole of the human condition as it has unfolded in time. Without history, nothing makes sense, from the meaning of words to the formation of identities, to institutions, states, and societies. History straddles the boundary between the social sciences and humanities. Like the other social sciences, it has established methods of investigation and proof, but it differs from them in that it encompasses, potentially, every area of human culture from the beginning of recorded time. Like the other humanities, it uses ordinary language and established modes of telling its stories, but it is constrained by evidence left us from the past. 

The History Department is home to a distinguished group of scholar-teachers 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. 

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Upcoming History Events - Spring 2026

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Spring 2026 - Special Event, Monday, March 23, 2026 @ 4:30pm in PAC / FCPA 101

From Occupation to European Integration in the French Zone of Post-Nazi Germany

A History Homecoming event

Drew Flanagan '10

Drew Flanagan is an assistant professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford in
Bradford, Pennsylvania, where he also directs the History and Political Science BA program. He
received a BA in history from Wesleyan University in 2010, an MA in modern European history
from Brandeis University in 2011, and a Ph.D in modern European history from Brandeis in
2018. His research focuses on the history of the Franco-German borderlands and the global
entanglements of the European unity project, above all the links between European integration,
the Cold War, and the process of decolonization in the French Colonial Empire (after 1946, the
French Union). Professor Flanagan’s work has been supported by grants from the National
Endowment for the Humanities, the Embassy of France in the United States, and the European
Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2025, he received a Fulbright-Hays grant for
curriculum development and research in Senegal and the Gambia.

 

See all History events here

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We are pleased to announce that the Wesleyan Majors Committee has recently published Volume 15 of The Undergraduate Journal of Wesleyan University: Historical Narratives. Click here to access Historical Narratives Volume 15 and past issues.

 Historical Narratives Journal

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History Juniors:

White Fellowship and Buel Prize applications are due 4/20/2026 

White Fellowship and Buel prize applications should be sent directly to Be Patten (ppatten@wesleyan.edu) and include the following: 

  1. Your proposed thesis / research title
  2. A brief description of the proposed project, with an explanation of its signficance, including the relevant scholarly literature;
  3. an account of the proposed methods of inquiry;
  4. a detailed budget including a statement of financial need (please see your email for a link to the sheet);
  5. the name of the faculty member who will be supervisig your project/sending a letterof recommendation.
  6. In addition, we must receive separately a brief confidential letter of recommendation, preferably from your thesis supervisor, sent directly to Be Patten (ppatten@wesleyan.edu).

 


 

Faculty News

Valeria Lopéz Fadul’s book, The Cradle of Words: Language and Power in the Spanish Empire was released January 14, 2025. A public conversation for this book will take place on February 18, held by The Fries Center during the “Power of Language” week.

Laura Ann Twagira gave a talk entitled "Engineering the Daily Meal: Women, Food, and Techno-Politics in Rural Mali" for Stanford's African Studies Center in February, 2022. For more information and to see the video, click here.

Ethan Kleinberg's new book, Emmanuel Levinas’s Talmudic Turn: Philosophy and Jewish Thought, will be published October, 2021 in the Cultural Memory in the Present Series from Stanford University Press.

Check out Laura Ann Twagira's new book: Embodied Engineering: Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Taste in Twentieth-Century Mali (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2021). Laura Ann Twagira also edited a special issue of Technology and Culture (special issue Africanizing the History of Technology) 61 no. 2 Supplement, April 2020.

Ying Jia Tan's new book Recharging China in War and Revolution, 1882-1955, published with Cornell University Press, was released on May 29, 2021. The open access e-book can be downloaded for free, and the print-on-demand paperback is also available for purchase.