Greetings from the Center for Campus History! We know it’s that time of year where you’re busy airing out your sweaters and setting up your decorative gourds, but why not take a quick break to check out some events, research, archival finds, book and TV recommendations, and did we mention events? Read on!

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.

Did you catch the YWCA Madison Racial Justice Summit earlier this month? Then you may have seen CCH undergrad student researchers presenting their public history work!

We’re so excited that Amaya Boman and Kaleb Autman were able to join Center staff members facilitating a session at the conference on public history and radical imagination. 

Read more about the presentation and Amaya and Kaleb’s work here.

You know you couldn’t escape an October newsletter without something spooky! (Or at least strange.) Below are a few finds from the archives showing students celebrating Halloweens past.

Events and events and events! We’re super excited to be involved in this cool stuff going on in the coming weeks.

Join Dr. Sami Schalk, UW professor in Gender & Women’s Studies, in conversation with CCH Director Kacie Lucchini Butcher for a discussion on Black disability politics, presented by the University Committee on Disability Access and Inclusion. 

Wednesday, October 18 from 5:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. 

Memorial Union Tripp Commons

RSVP here.

The Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies presents a pair of lectures by Riv-Ellen Prell, professor emerita of American Studies at the University of Minnesota and a long-time faculty member of the Center for Jewish Studies, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Monday November 6 – University Students in the 1930s: Antisemitism and Racism on Midwestern Campuses

Tuesday November 7 – The Jewish Counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s: A Struggle to Democratize and Transform American Jewish Life

Both lectures are at 4:00 p.m. at the Pyle Center. Read more here.

You have until November 7 to finish off this year’s UW Go Big Read book. That’s when author David McRaney will be on campus for a keynote conversation talking about How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion. 

You can find out more about McRaney, the event and the Go Big Read program here. 

Tuesday, November 7 from 7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.

Memorial Union Theater – Shannon Hall 

No tickets required.

Hear journalist and author Samuel Freedman tell the dramatic story of young Hubert Humphrey, his allies, and his adversaries in the battle for a better nation as he discusses his new book, Into the Bright Sunshine: Hubert Humphrey and the Forgotten Civil Rights Struggle of the 1940s. 

Find out more from the Friends of the UW Madison Libraries. 

Monday, November 13, 2023 from 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. 

Wisconsin Historical Society Auditorium

Each month, we like to share one of the many (many… many… ) books that have helped the Center’s research or piqued our interest. 

This month we want to share Campus Counterspaces by Micere Keels. Subtitled “Black and Latinx Students' Search for Community at Historically White Universities,” Keels’ book follows the experiences of a cohort of more than 500 Black and Latinx students since they enrolled at five historically white colleges and universities in the fall of 2013.

Keels, a professor of comparative human development, offers a critique of how universities have responded to the challenges these students face, and offers a way forward that goes beyond making diversity statements to taking diversity actions.

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

This month: What is the history of wild Halloween festivities on State Street?

The answer: The holiday has long been an occasion for revelry on campus, but according to On Wisconsin, State Street in particular became the center of Halloween weekend festivities in the late 1970s when students and townies alike would dress up and bar-hop on the blocks close to campus. By the 1980s, as many as 100,000 people would crowd the street, drinking, partying and causing mischief — So much so that the largely unorganized event became a headache for law enforcement and city officials, with fires, vandalism, injuries and arrests every year. The city eventually reigned things in, rebranding the party as Freakfest – a gated, ticked version of the event that was still wild but smaller and more controlled. In 2020, COVID-19 put Freakfest on hold and it has not returned since. 

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, one more suitably spooky recommendation … or should we say espooky?  Los Espookys is an off-the-wall Spanish-language comedy following friends who turn their love for horror into a business, providing horror to their clients in a dreamy Latin American country where the strange and eerie are just part of daily life.

Available for streaming on Max.