Our affiliated faculty, numbering eleven in all, address all historical eras and regions of the world.
Drawing as well on our department’s traditional strengths in the history of gender and in cultural and social history, we examine how war has served as an arena for the expression of gender norms, cultural concepts of virtue and honor, and military ethics. Prominent military historians John Dower and Stephen Ambrose have also served on the faculty at the UW. Author of such classics as The Old Army: A Portrait of the American Army in Peacetime, 1784-1898and The Regulars: The American Army 1898-1941, Coffman is broadly considered one of the founders of modern military history in the United States. Renowned historian Edward “Mac” Coffman, for example, was professor at the university from 1961 until his retirement in 1992. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has a long history of excellence in Military History. The War in Society and Culture (WISC) Program aims to further our historical understanding of armed conflict by richly contextualizing warfare in the cultures, societies, economies, and environments in which it takes place.
