1995 Notable Wisconsin Authors

Nancy Ekholm Burkert
George L. Mosse
Yi-Fu Tuan

Nancy Ekholm Burkert, 1933-

In the introduction to The Art of Nancy Ekholm Burkert (Bantam, 1977), Michael Danoff, then curator of the Milwaukee Art Museum, states, "Burkert works in a tradition of artists for whom book illustration is one of the fine arts like painting or sculpture. Each of the drawings she makes is, in its own right, a fully realized work of art. Her drawings are not a secondary accompaniment to words, but a primary and integral part of the book experience in which she is an equal partner with the writer."

Born in Sterling, Colorado, Nancy moved to Wisconsin with her parents when she was twelve. The summers she enjoyed at the family cottage in Minong, respect and love of nature, her commitment to making her illustrations a "reference for life," and her emphasis on accuracy and detail are qualities and trademarks that have translated into many prestigious awards. Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs was named a 1973 Honor Book for the Caldecott Award and a 1972 New York Times Notable Book. Her book, Valentine and Orson, received the Boston Globe Horn Book Award along with a Special Citation for Creative Excellence from the Awards Committee.

Two recent projects relate to Burkert's expertise in art and books. In 1990, she founded the Bread and Books program which brings together readers and books with children and their families who attend Milwaukee's free on-site meal programs. She organized an exhibition both in New York and at the Milwaukee Art Museum around images representing concerns for peace by artists of books for children.

Burkert currently is preparing an one-person exhibit for a Milwaukee gallery in Spring 1996. She and her husband, Robert Burkert, a professor of art retired from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, enjoy a close relationship with their children, Claire, now living in Nepal, and Rand and his family in Italy.

Books Written and Illustrated:

Valentine and Orson (1970)

Selected Books Illustrated:

Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach (1961)
Hans Christian Andersen, The Nightingale, tr. by Eva LeGallienne (1965)
Edward Lear and Ogden Nash, The Scroobious Pip (1968)
Hans Christian Andersen, The Fir Tree (1970)
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs, tr. by Randall Jarrell (1972)
Emily Dickinson, Acts of Light (1980)

George L. Mosse, 1918-1999

George Lachmann Mosse has enjoyed a long and distinguished career as Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. An Extraordinarily prolific scholar, he has written extensively on various aspects of European history, with special emphasis on cultural and intellectual topics. Germany has been a central focus of his research, which includes a history of the Reformation, and numerous studies of the intellectual roots of fascism and the Nazi period. One reviewer described his Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich as a "milestone in the study of National Socialism" and "masterly in presenting the ideology of Nazism." As a testament to the enduring value of Professor Mosse's books, many of them continue to be in print and many have been translated into foreign languages.

George Mosse was born in Berlin, Germany and educated at Cambridge University, Haverford College, and Harvard University, earning the Ph.D. in 1946. He came to Madison in 1955 after ten years on the faculty of the University of Iowa, and was named John C. Bascom Professor of History in 1965 and Bascom-Weinstein Professor of Jewish Studies in 1983. He has served as guest professor at institutions around the world, including Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Among the awards he has received are the Premio Aqui Storia, the Premio Prezzolini (Florence), and in 1988, the Goethe Institut's Goethe-Medaille; he is also the holder of several honorary degrees. He has co-edited the Journal of Contemporary History since its beginnings in 1966. Emeritus at the UW-Madison since 1989, Mosse has continued his research and writing; in 1994 he was Shapiro Senior Scholar in Residence at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Mosse credits Madison -- university, students, and fellow faculty -- for providing him with a stimulating and exciting intellectual environment in which to pursue his interest in politics and history. Anyone who has read this renowned historian's monumental work or attended his witty, provocative lectures will agree that George Mosse has repaid that confidence many times over.

Selected Writings:

The Reformation (1953; revised 1963)
The Culture of Western Europe: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, an Introduction (1961; revised 1974 and 1988)
The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (1964)
Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (1978)
Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe (1985)
Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (1990)
Confronting the Nation: Jewish and Western Nationalism (1993)

Yi-Fu Tuan, 1930-

When asked "Why are you a geographer?" Yi-Fu Tuan's eloquently simple response was, "I have always wanted to know what it is like to live on earth." These words provide a key to the man and his writing; he is not only geographer, but also philosopher and humanist, an unabashed Renaissance man in an age of rigid specialists, as readable an essayist as he is intrepid a scholar.

Born in Tientsin, China and educated at Oxford, Professor Tuan came to the United States in 1951, where he received a Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley in 1957 and went on to teach at, among others, the Universities of Indiana, New Mexico, Toronto, and Minnesota before coming in 1984 to Wisconsin. In 1987 he received the Cullum Geographical Medal of the American Geographical Society. At present he is J.K. Wright and Vilas Research Professor in the Geography Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Tuan's numerous writings reflect his view of geography in its broadest sense, as the interaction of human being and environment and how we fashion a world out of everything around us: natural and man-made places such as countryside, garden, or city; our fellow animal and human beings; even food, music, study, thought. Early works such as Topophila and Space and Place establish the foundation that leads to his later focus on specific aspects of human life such as the nature of fear in our own and other societies in Landscapes of Fear, or the need of people to control and alter for often selfish purposes plants, animals, and fellow humans such as servants, children, or wives, in Dominance and Affection. In recent works such as The Good Life and Passing Strange and Wonderful, both of which received WLA Outstanding Achievement Recognition, he considers the meaning of ideas like comfort, happiness and beauty in modern and historical times and in various groups and countries. The array of sources he draws on is consistently wide-ranging and eclectic.

An original thinker whose intellectual curiosity knows no bounds, Yi-Fu Tuan opens surprising new windows on our everyday world and helps us ponder with amazement its vast and unending diversity.

Selected Writings:

Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values (1974)
Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (1977)
Landscapes of Fear (1979)
Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets (1984)
The Good Life (1986)
Morality and Imagination: Paradoxes of Progress (1989)
Passing Strange and Wonderful: Aesthetics, Nature, and Culture (1993)

1995 WLA Literary Awards Committee Members