Faculty Guide

Title

Professor of History

History
Legal Studies
Politics

Expertise

United States social and political history, with special interests in legal history, urban history, and the Progressive Era (1890-1920).

Profile

Michael Willrich has been teaching at Brandeis since 1999. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on American political and legal history (from the colonial period to the present), crime and punishment, social politics and the welfare state, the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and the literature of American history.
Professor Willrich's research seeks to understand the many ways that ordinary Americans have encountered, experienced, and responded to the expanding scale and scope of government social intervention since the Civil War. Willrich's first book, CITY OF COURTS: SOCIALIZING JUSTICE IN PROGRESSIVE ERA CHICAGO, examined the rise of radical new ideas about the social causes of crime and the social possibilities of law in a modern urban-industrial society.
His latest book, POX: AN AMERICAN HISTORY tells the story of the great wave of smallpox epidemics that struck America and its overseas territories around the turn of the twentieth century, spurring the growth of modern public health authority, and engendering widespread social and legal opposition to the government policy of compulsory vaccination.
Willrich's writing has also appeared in The Journal of American History, Law and History Review, the Journal of Policy History, The Journal of Urban History, The New York Times, The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, Mother Jones, and The Washington City Paper.

Awards and Honors

William H. Welch Medal, American Association for the History of Medicine (for Pox) (2013)

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2011 (for Pox) (2012)

Finalist, Mark Lynton History Prize (for Pox) (2012)

Lawrence W. Levine Award, Organization of American Historians (for Pox) (2012)

A New Yorker Favorite Nonfiction Book for 2011 (for Pox) (2011)

Dean's Award for Outstanding Mentoring of Students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2011 (2011)

Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship Program, 2007-2010, 2010-2013. (2010)

Norman Award for Faculty Research and Creative Projects, Brandeis. (2009)

Named a Top Young Historian by George Mason Universitys History News Network (2005)

Norman Award for Faculty Research and Creative Projects (2005)

Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies (2004)

Residential Fellowship, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University (2004 - 2005)

William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Book Prize, American Society for Legal History (2004)

Bernstein Faculty Fellowship, Brandeis University (2003)

John H. Dunning Prize, American Historical Association (2003)

Mazer Award for research support, Brandeis University (2001 - 2002)

Biennial Prize, Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, for "the best published article treating any aspect of U.S. history in the period 1865-1917." (2000 - 2001)

American Bar Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, Chicago (declined). (1999 - 2000)

Erwin C. Surrency Prize, for best article on law or constitutionalism, American Society for Legal History (1999 - 2000)

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the Newberry Library, Chicago (1999 - 2000)

National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend (1999)

Courses Taught

FYS	32b	Crime and Punishment in History
HIST	160a	American Legal History I
HIST	160b	American Legal History II
HIST	161b	American Political History
HIST	168b	America in the Progressive Era: 1890-1920
HIST	200b	Colloquium in American History
HIST	201a	Major Problems in American Legal History
HIST	205a	Social Politics in the Progressive Era
HIST	205b	Introduction to Doctoral Studies

Scholarship

Willrich, Michael. ""Homicide in Chicago 1870-1930" (Website Review)." Journal of American History vol. 99 March 2013: 1333-1334.

Willrich, Michael. "“A Scar Nobly Got”." The Scientist July 2011.

Willrich, Michael. "Why Parents Fear the Needle." New York Times January 21, 2011: Op-Ed A 27.

Willrich, Michael. POX: AN AMERICAN HISTORY. New York: Penguin Press, 2011.

Willrich, Michael. "'The Least Vaccinated of Any Civilized Country': Personal Liberty and Public Health in the Progressive Era." Journal of Policy History 20. 1 (WINTER 2008) (2008).

Willrich, Michael. "Chapter 6: Criminal Justice in the United States." The Cambridge History of American Law. vol. 3 Ed. Christopher L. Tomlins and Michael Grossberg. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 195-231.

Willrich, Michael. "Urbanism is History: A Review Essay." Connecticut History 44. Spring 2005 (2005): 154-157.

Willrich, Michael. "'Close That Place of Hell': Poor Women and the Cultural Politics of Prohibition." Journal of Urban History 29. (2003).

Willrich, Michael. "Boyz to Men . . . And Back Again?: Revisiting a Forgotten Experiment in Juvenile Justice." Judicature 86. (2003): 258-262.

Willrich, Michael. "Dickering for Justice: Power, Interests, and the Plea Bargaining Juggernaut." Reviews in American History 31. (2003).

Willrich, Michael. "The Case for Courts: Law and Political Development in the Progressive Era." The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History., 2003

Willrich, Michael. City of Courts: Socializing Justice in Progressive Era Chicago. Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Willrich, Michael. "Home Slackers: Men, the State, and Welfare in Modern America." Journal of American History 87. (2000): 460-489.

Willrich, Michael. "The Two Percent Solution: Eugenic Jurisprudence and the Socialization of American Law, 1900-1930." Law and History Review 16. (1998): 63-111.