Modern History Colloquium

Modern History Colloquium is an occasional lecture series hosted at the Department of History. Speakers are usually visitors from other institutions who are invited to address any aspect of research in the Modern period (loosely defined, but usually comprising the period after ca. 1500 CE).

For upcoming Colloquium events and other events sponsored by the Department, see the LSU History Department Facebook Page.

Colloquium presentations are free and open to the University community, and to the public at large.  

Upcoming Modern History Colloquium Presentations (Spring 2026):

Friday September 18: "American Sexual Exceptionalism: Prostitution, Trafficking, and US Foreign Policy"

Prof. Eva Payne, University of Mississippi

3:30 pm, Location TBA

Tuesday October 6

Prof. Justin Randolph, Texas A&M

Wednesday October 21

Prof. Andrew Shankman, Rutgers University--Camden

Wednesday November 18

Prof. Elizabeth Lehfeldt, Cleveland State University

 

Recent Modern History Colloquium Presentations:

"The End of Liberation: Instrumentalizing the German-Tanzanian Past, 1979–1989"

Prof. Matthew Unangst, SUNY Oneonta

"The Breach: Iran-Contra and the Assault on Modern Democracy"

Prof. Alan McPherson, Temple University

"Democracy, Truth, and Lies"

Prof. Sophia Rosenfeld, University of Pennsylvania, December 1, 2025

"The Dissertation: European Origins and Embedded Globalization"

Prof. Kevin Chang, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, November 11, 2025

"Slave Trading in the Civil War South”

Prof. Robert Colby, University of Mississippi, September 15, 2025

"A Marvelous Foreshadowing”: The Seventeenth-Century Dutch Slave Trade and Its Impact on North American Slavery"

Prof. Andrea Mostermann, University of New Orleans, March 25, 2025

"Slaves of Southern Carceral States: Coerced Labor, Sexual Violence, and Resistance on the Prison Plantation"

Prof. Robert Chase, Stony Brook University, March 14, 2025

"Oceanic Itinerants: Transformation and its Limits in the Early Modern Spanish Tuna Fisheries"

Prof. Molly Warsh, University of Pittsburgh, January 31, 2025

"When Natural Disasters Became National Disasters: Hurricane Camille Civil Rights and the Southern Strategy"

Prof. Andy Morris, Union College, November 18, 2024

"The Past, Present, and Future of Southern Plantations"

Prof. Whitney Stewart, University of Texas--Dallas, November 1, 2024

"Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942-2022"

Prof. Frank Trentmann, Birbeck College, University of London, April 22, 2024

"Question of Priorities? Rape and the U.S. Military Justice System during the Second World War"

Prof. Raymond Douglas, Colgate University, April 15, 2024

"Why They Gave: CARE and American Aid to Germany after 1945"

Dr. Maximilian Klose, Fellow at the German Historical Institute, Washington DC and Lecturer at the John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität Berlin, January 19, 2024

"Originalism and the Role of History in American Law"

Prof. Joshua Sellers, University of Texas (Law School), September 21, 2023

"Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom"

Prof. Kathryn Olivarius, Stanford University, October 27, 2023

"Patricide, Fratricide, and Betrayal: The Role of Parthia in the First War with Rome" 

Prof. Nikolaus Overtoom, University of Washington, Pullman, September 15, 2023

"Is There a Women's History of Vatican I?"

Prof. Carol Harrison, University of Southern Carolina, March 9, 2022

"Facts and Narratives in the 1619 Project: The Ghosts of David Abraham"

Ruben Flores, University of Rochester, March 4, 2022 

"The Transformation of the World: The Napoleonic Wars in Global Perspective"

 Prof. Alexander Mikaberidze, LSU-Shreveport, Jan. 29, 2021

"Kant's Hottentots"

Martin Alexander Ruehl, University of Cambridge, Sept. 20, 2019

“Visualizing Fascism: Japan’s War without Pictures”

Julia Adeney Thomas, University of Notre Dame, Sept. 6, 2019

“Same-sex love in 1930s China”

Prof. Peter Carroll, Northwestern University, April 5, 2019

“Jubilant Empire: Festivals, Fireworks and Fealty in the Seventeenth-Century Spanish World”

Rachael Ball, University of Alaska-Anchorage, March 15, 2019