Conference to honor Mosse’s scholarship

There was no one like George Mosse.

He changed forever the way history is studied, guiding students, colleagues and the discipline itself into previously unexplored intellectual territory.

Mosse was UW–Madison’s Bascom-Weinstein Professor of Jewish Studies until his retirement in 1989. He died in 1999. An international conference Sept. 7-9 will honor Mosse’s memory and explore his scholarly legacy.

The free public conference will draw upon the expertise of scholars from Cambridge, Israel, Rome, the United States and UW–Madison. Topics under discussion will cover much of Mosse’s vast academic turf, according to Stanley Payne, one of the conference organizers.

“He began early in his career by focusing on early Europe, including the Reformation,” says Payne, UW–Madison’s J.C. Vives Professor and Hilldale Professor of History, and Mosse’s colleague for 31 years. Payne says that Mosse shifted his interest to the late 19th and 20th century, coming to rest on the intellectual evolution of European fascism, “its sociocultural history,” says Payne, an expert on Italian fascism and the Spanish Civil War.

He adds that Mosse’s most striking work quite possibly came in the 1980s and ’90s, when he turned his attention toward notions of gender and sexuality, and national myths, imagery and identity.

“Clearly he has widened the scope of history, and was fearless in exploring difficult subjects,” Payne says. “He encouraged his students and other faculty to think independently, to approach their subjects with a fresh, objective eye.”

John Tortorice, development specialist for the General Library System and another conference organizer, Mosse’s influence on students, colleagues and others stretched around the world.

“Everyone we asked to participate in the conference accepted immediately — that’s quite unusual and says something,” Tortorice says. “All of the participants have felt his effect on their own work.”

Mosse brought an intensely personal approach to his own studies, Tortorice says: “His interest in history grew directly out of his own experience.”

Born in Berlin, Germany in 1918, Mosse narrowly escaped Nazis persecution by fleeing to England in 1933. There, he studied at Cambridge University before emigrating to the United States in 1939. He received a B.S. from Haverford College in Pennsylvania, and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. He taught at the University of Iowa before joining the UW faculty in 1955.

At UW–Madison, Mosse taught courses in European intellectual history and Jewish history, some of which were broadcast as part of Wisconsin Public Radio’s “College of the Air” series.

Saul Friedlander, a professor at the University of California-Los Angeles, will open the conference with an overview of “Mosse’s Influence on the Historiography of the Holocaust” Sept. 7 at 4:30 p.m. in the Pyle Center.

The UW–Madison Institute for Research in the Humanities is sponsoring “An Historian’s Legacy: George L. Mosse and Recent Research on Fascism, Society.” With the exception of an opening night banquet Sept. 7, the conference is a free public event. All sessions will be held in the Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St. No advance registration is required.

For a schedule or more information, contact Loretta Freiling, (608) 262-3855,