Greetings from the Center for Campus History! Happy holidays and happy new year! We hope everyone is able to finish off the semester smoothly and can enjoy some rest over the break. But before you go, we have one last newsletter for the year with center updates, archival finds, events, book recommendations and more!

The University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Rebecca M. Blank Center For Campus History is an ongoing university effort to uncover and give voice to those who experienced, challenged, and overcame prejudice on campus. As always, if you have a story to share, an event you think should be researched, or a person you think has been overlooked, please email us at centerforcampushistory@wisc.edu.

Usually we’d use this space to highlight something cool or interesting we’ve come across in the archives during our research – a historical photo, say, or a newspaper clipping. Maybe a bobblehead or a note on a piece of toilet paper. But this month we’re happy to give some much-deserved attention to the place that painstakingly collects and preserves it all: the UW Archives itself. 

Take a look at this writeup from On Wisconsin that gives behind-the-scenes info on how the archives team does their work, and dusts off several pieces of UW’s past from mandolins to cannabis to queer history.

OK, so maybe it’s still a little early to start looking forward to spring, but it’s not too early to at least start marking your calendars for spring events. We’re especially excited about these two 175th anniversary celebration events:

Mark this special UW Founder’s Day with birthday celebrations and treats. 

UW is inviting greater Madison community members to join us on campus to experience the best of UW and a taste of the Wisconsin Idea.

We get asked a lot of questions about UW history. Each month we’ll answer one in the newsletter. 

This month: Spring and summer have the Terrace. Fall has Homecoming and tailgating. What are some of UW’s most enduring winter traditions? 

The answer: Sure, winter in Wisconsin is no cakewalk. But that has never stopped students from having fun when the temps drop and the snow starts to fall. Since the 1940s, the Hoofers club has been putting on the Winter Carnival out on Lake Mendota, with its earliest activities including broom hockey and ice skate cabarets. For as long as campus dining halls have had cafeteria trays, students have been liberating them to sled down Bascom and Observatory Hills. And while each generation likes to think they invented the campus-wide snowball battle royale, photos like the one above from 1923 show the frozen conflicts are ongoing. 

Have a question? Let us know! Email us at centerforcampushistory@wisc.edu. 

Each month Center Director Kacie Lucchini Butcher will share a book, podcast, movie, quote, or something else she thinks has been adding to the CCH. We're calling it "From The Desk of KLB".

This month From The Desk of KLB, Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou.

What starts as a seemingly straightforward campus novel following a Taiwanese American PhD student slogging through her dissertation quickly spirals into a series larger-than-life misadventures that mix burning books and pharmaceutical hallucinations with razor sharp send-ups of race, power and academia.