Department of History

Historians learn from each other and fine-tune their work by workshopping in-progress papers and chapters. In its second year, UF History’s Workshop will feature four faculty members this fall with discussants from in and outside UF.

The first workshop for 2021-22 will feature a paper by Benjamin Wise, “Folk Devils: A History of Drinkers, Dancers, Lovers and Queers in God’s Country: A Book Project in Quandary Mode.”

Benjamin Wise is an associate professor in American History, author of William Alexander Percy: The Curious Life of a Mississippi Planter and Sexual Freethinker (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), and recipient of the C. Vann Woodward Prize for best dissertation in southern history, 2009; CLAS teacher of the year, 2010; UF History’s John Mahon Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Discussants will include:

David Sehat, Professor of History, Georgia State University, author of The Myth of American Religious Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2015), which won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians

Trysh Travis, UF professor in Women’s Studies, CLAS Associate Dean for the Humanities, and author of The Language of the Heart: Twelve-Step Recovery from Alcoholics Anonymous to Oprah Winfrey (UNC Press, 2009) and Feminists on Drugs: A History (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming)