Humanities renaming would honor Mosse

A vote expected Friday, Oct. 5, by the UW System Board of Regents would rename the Humanities Building in honor of George L. Mosse, the renowned scholar of European cultural intellectual history who died last year.

Mosse was internationally recognized as an expert on Holocaust studies, fascism, and Jewish and German history. Toward the end of his life he turned his attention to the history of sexuality and the body.

If approved by the regents, the change to the George L. Mosse Humanities Building would take effect immediately. According to UW–Madison history department chair Thomas J. Archdeacon, it will be a fitting tribute to Mosse’s memory.

“George was an intellectual whose interests and skills went far beyond the discipline of history. Concern and support for art, music and other forms of cultural expression were integral to George’s heritage and life. In the breadth of his imagination and the scope of his work, George L. Mosse embodied the word ‘humanist,'” Archdeacon says.

Mosse joined the Department of History in 1955. He later became the John C. Bascom Professor of History and was the first Weinstein-Bascom Professor of Jewish Studies in 1983. Born in Berlin and trained at Cambridge University in England and Harvard University in the United States, Mosse wrote more than 25 books. He also helped found the influential Journal of Contemporary History and in 1989 inaugurated the Shapiro Scholar-in-Residence program at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

Humanities opened in 1969. Today, it houses the School of Music and Departments of Afro-American Studies, Art and History.