The annual Casper was inaugurated by the History Department in 1993 to honor Rev. Henry W. Casper, S. J., a long-time member of the history departments at Creighton University in Omaha and at Marquette University (he retired as Professor Emeritus from Marquette in 1974). He was an expert in nineteenth century European History and in American church history; his most important work was a three-volume history of the Catholic Church in Nebraska. The Casper Lecture, as well as several programs for graduate students in history, is funded by an endowment from Dr. and Mrs. Wayne L. Ryan of Omaha. Dr. Ryan was a student of Father Casper’s at Creighton.
Oct. 1, 2025 at 4:30 p.m. | Lunda Room, Alumni Memorial Union
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"Wealth in People" Dr. James Robinson "I propose an account of African history based on the centrality of connections and networks in social life and how this came to be valued as "wealth in people." Though many parts of the world have similar values I argue that Africa differed by developing a distinct "ensemble" - particularly a set of interlocking institutionalizations of this ethic which led it to dominate society in ways rarely found elsewhere in the world.“ |
James Robinson is a University Professor at the Harris School for Public Policy and Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago and winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. He studied economics at the London School of Economics, the University of Warwick and Yale University and is co-author with Daron Acemoglu of Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Why Nations Fail, (which has been translated into 51 languages including Amharic, Arabic, Dari, Farsi, Mongolian and Somali), and The Narrow Corridor. His next book, on Sub-Saharan Africa, entitled Wealth in People will be published in 2026. He is currently conducting research in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Nigeria where he is a Fellow at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Nigeria-Nsukka. He taught every summer for 28 years at the University of the Andes in Bogotá and now teaches research design in the pan-African collaborative PhD program in economics run by the African Economic Research Consortium in Nairobi.
Free and open to the public
Sponsored by the Marquette University Department of History
For more information, call 414.288.7217.
2010 - 2024
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2024-2025 |
Dr. Robert Stolz "On Fascism: Lessons from Japan" |
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2023-2024 |
Dr. Julia Adeney Thomas "Frameworks for the Future: Climate Change, the Environment, and the Anthropocene" |
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2022-2023 |
Dr. Guy Beiner "Forgetting a Global Pandemic: Lessons from the Spanish Flu" |
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2021-2022 |
Dr. Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens "Medical Sites of Modernity in Guatemala: Women Religious and Maya Health During the Cold War" |
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2017-2018 |
Anna Clark of the University of Minnesota delivered the 17th annual Casper Lecture on March 26 at Marquette University's Raynor Library. Her topic was “Human Rights and Animal Rights: Local Control of Hospitals in the 1890s British Empire.” Her lecture is part of her current book project, which is tentatively called, “Rage against the Machine: Individual Rights, Biopolitics in Britain and its Empire.” Anna Clark is professor of history at the University of Minnesota and President of the North American Conference on British Studies. She is the author of Desire: The History of European Sexuality (2008), Scandal: The Sexual Politics of the British Constitution (2004), and The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (1995). She is a former editor of the American British Studies Journal. |
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2016-2017 |
Eckart Frahm, Yale University |
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2015-2016 |
Juan Cole, University of Michigan Watch Juan Cole deliver "Iran's Intervention in Syria: Ideology or Pragmatism" |
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2014-2015 |
Leonard V. Smith, Oberlin College |
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2013-2014 |
Jon E. Lendon, University of Virginia Watch Jon E. Lendon deliver "Ancient Greek Infantry Combat: What Can Modern Riots Tell Us?" |
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2012-2013 |
Rebecca J. Scott, University of Michigan "She had always enjoyed her freedom: Re-enslavement and the Law in the Era of the Haitian Revolution." |
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2011-2012 |
Anthony F. Aveni, Colgate University |
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2010-2011 |
Raymond Mentzer, University of Iowa |
2002 - 2009
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2009-2010 |
Judith Bennett, University of Southern California Watch Judith Bennett deliver "Death and the Maiden in Chaucer’s England" |
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2008-2009 |
Bruce Cumings, University of Chicago "North Korea: Still in the axis of evil?" |
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2007-2008 |
Julia Clancy-Smith, University of Arizona "Where Elites Meet: Harem Visits, Sea-Bathing, and Sociabilities in Tunisia, c. 1830-1881" |
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2006-2007 |
Marianne Elliott, University of Liverpool "Irish Protestantism and the Specter of Popery" |
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2005-2006 |
Jonathan Spence, Yale University "Thinking it Through: Chinese and Catholics in the Seventeenth Century" |
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2004-2005 |
Susan Desan, University of Wisconsin-Madison "The Politics of Love: Marriage, Divorce, and Gender Relations during the French Revolution" |
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2003-2004 |
Paul Cobb, University of Notre Dame "There Goes the Neighborhood: The World of a Muslim Family in an Age of Crusades" |
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2002-2003 |
John Merriman, Yale University "Collaboration and Resistance in Vichy France." |
Department of History
Sensenbrenner Hall, 202A
1103 W. Wisconsin Avenue
Milwaukee, WI 53233
(414) 288-7217
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