University of Wisconsin–Madison
“Dogfaces.” “Dough feet.” “The poor bloody infantry.” Soldiers in Europe during the second World War called themselves a range of names, and neither knew nor cared much about their generals’ plans. But they filled their diaries with sensory descriptions of the front, like the sound of artillery shells, the taste of rations, and the sight …
As a first-generation college student in a new country, there were so many unknowns with respect to culture, conduct, academics, interests, foods, accents and more. However, these pale in comparison to navigating a colossal college machinery of more than 45,000 students to find an understanding of myself and the world. I identified early on that …
Kathryn Ciancia’s fascination with how people have historically mobilized the idea of “civilization” began with the stories her Polish grandfather shared. As a child growing up in a town near Liverpool in the United Kingdom, Ciancia, now an associate professor of history, would listen to him describe his childhood in Poland in the 1920s. He …
Professor of English shares her memories of celebrating the Vietnamese holiday as a child. “Lunar New Year might bring to mind festivals and fireworks, but I’ve always associated it with a kind of isolation. Long before the pandemic, long before the rest of America learned about sriracha and pho, I grew up in a Vietnamese refugee …