Barbara Y. WelkeProfessor of Law and Associate Professor of HistoryUniversity of Kansas, B.A. Professor Barbara Y. Welke is professor of law and associate professor of history. She teaches and writes in the areas of 19th and 20th century U.S. history and U.S. legal and constitutional history. She is Director of the Program in Law and History (2007-09) and is an adjunct faculty member in gender, women, and sexuality studies and American studies. Professor Welke received her B.A. degree in history and political science, with highest distinction, honors in History, from the University of Kansas in 1980; her J.D. degree, cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School in 1983; and her Ph.D., with departmental honors, from the University of Chicago in 1995. Prior to joining the University of Minnesota History Department in 1998, she was an assistant professor of history at the University of Oregon from 1995–98. Before returning to graduate school, Professor Welke practiced law as an associate in the law firm of Jenner & Block in Chicago. Professor Welke has received awards for both her scholarship and teaching. Her first book, Recasting American Liberty: Gender, Race, Law, and the Railroad Revolution, 1865-1920, was awarded the AHA Littleton-Griswold Prize. It tells of how Americans' encounter with corporate power, dangerous technologies, and modernized space reshaped law and broader cultural assumptions about the relative obligations of individuals, corporations, and the state in safeguarding individual liberty in everyday life. Her two current book projects — a study of law and legal individuality in the long 19th century and a socio-legal history of product liability — reflect her continued interest in the relationship between law and liberty in American history, with special interest in gender, race, technology, corporate power, and the state. Professor Welke's broad interest in American history and commitment to undergraduate, graduate, and professional students is reflected in her teaching and advising in the History Department and at the Law School. She teaches courses in modern American history and U.S. legal and constitutional history at all levels. Ph.D. students she has advised have gone on to tenure-track appointments at Princeton University, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Vermont. In 2006, she was awarded the Horace T. Morse-University of Minnesota Alumni Association Award recognizing excellence in undergraduate teaching, advising, academic program development, and educational leadership. In June 2007, she chaired the Fourth Biennial Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History at the University of Wisconsin and will be returning to chair the 2009 Hurst Summer Institute. Professor Welke is actively engaged in departmental, college, university, professional, and public service. She is currently Director of the Program in Law and History at the University of Minnesota and has served as Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of History. She served as Program Committee Chair for the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association and has long been an active member in the American Society for Legal History, serving on the Board of Directors (2002-2005), the Editorial Board for Law & History Review (1995-Present), Annual Meeting Program Committee (2005, 2001, 1998), Committee on the Future of the Society (2007-present), and the Nominating Committee (2008-2010). She has also served on major prize committees in legal history, including the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Prize Committee, the AHA Littleton-Griswold Prize Committee, and the Law & Society Association Dissertation Prize Committee. Professor Welke has been involved in a range of public service activities, including participation in two Teaching American History Federal Grants. To learn more, read Professor Welke's academic CV.
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