Barbara Welke

Professor Barbara Young Welke is professor of history and professor of law, co-director of the program in law and history, and President of the American Society for Legal History. She teaches and writes about law in American life and modern U.S. history more generally. She is also an adjunct faculty member in American Studies and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies.

Professor Welke received her B.A. in history and political science, with highest distinction, honors in history, from the University of Kansas in 1980; her J.D., 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 Department of History 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 with Jenner & Block in Chicago.

She is the author of two books Recasting American Liberty: Gender, Race, Law, and the Railroad Revolution, 1865-1920 (Cambridge University Press, 2001), awarded the AHA Littleton-Griswold Prize in 2002 for the best book in any subject on the history of American law and society, and Law and the Borders of Belonging in the Long Nineteenth Century United States (Cambridge University Press, 2010).  Her third book Writing with Fire: The Cowboy Suit Tragedy and The Course of a Life will be published by the University of Chicago Press in September 2026. 

Her prizewinning articles include "The Cowboy Suit Tragedy: Spreading Risk, Owning Hazard in the Modern American Consumer Economy,” Journal of American History (June 2014), awarded SHCY 2015 (biennial) Fass-Sandin Prize for the best article on the history of childhood, a play “Owning Hazard, A Tragedy,” UC Irvine Law Review (September 2011), and "When All the Women Were White, and All the Blacks Were Men:  Gender, Class, Race, and the Road to Plessy, 1855-1914," Law & History Review (Fall 1995), awarded the ASLH Erwin C. Surrency Prize. Her research has been recognized with awards and fellowships both from the University of Minnesota and beyond, including being named as a Distinguished McKnight University Professor (2018), Scholar of the College in the College of Liberal Arts (2011-2014), and McKnight Land-Grant Professorship (2001-03). Her external awards include most recently a year as a Research Fellow at the Schelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University (2018-19).

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, the Law School, and beyond. She teaches courses in 19th and 20th century U. S. history and more specialized courses U.S. legal and constitutional history at all levels. Welke is actively engaged in advising Ph.D. students whose work engages the role of law in American history, including topics on citizenship, legal personhood, disability, class, gender, race, sexuality, immigration, labor, and social welfare. Ph.D. students she has advised have gone on to tenure-track and tenured appointments across the United States. In 2018 she received the Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate and Professional Education and in 2006 she received the Horace T. Morse-University of Minnesota Alumni Association Award recognizing excellence in undergraduate teaching, advising, academic program development, and educational leadership.  Her work with graduate students and early career scholars has long extended beyond the University of Minnesota, including leading the Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History, sponsored by the American Society for Legal History and hosted by the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in June 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2015. 

Professor Welke is actively engaged in departmental, college, university, professional, and public service. She has co-directed the Program in Law & History at the University of Minnesota since 2007.  She has co-chaired both the AHA Program Committee and the ASLH Program Committee, served on and chaired dissertation and book prize committees for the AHA, OAH, ASLH, and LSA. Her deepest professional roots are with the American Society for Legal History where she has served in a broad range of capacities with a special commitment to initiatives supporting graduate students and early career scholars, and more recently establishing a series of virtual initiatives to foster inclusion and community. In 2021, she was elected President-Elect of the ASLH.  In 2023, she became President of the ASLH, a position she will hold through 2025.