About Laura Lisy-Wagner

I am a cultural and intellectual historian of early modern Europe and its relationship with the wider world. My research focuses on central and eastern Europe, but my writing and teaching more generally look at transcultural trends across Europe and beyond. My first book, Islam, Christianity, and the Making of Czech Identity, 1453 - 1683, examines the construction of Czech identity from the Fall of Constantinople to the final siege of Vienna through discourse about the Turk. It utilizes written and material texts and draws on postcolonial theory to describe the hybrid nature of identity on the peripheries of Europe in this period. I am currently working on two classroom texts - an intellectual history about changes in epistemology during the early modern period and a more general textbook about interactions between Europe and the wider world. My next archival project will look at the construction of artificial fishponds in the sixteenth century in southern Bohemia and the relationship between projects of state-building and land development in the period. My teaching interests encompass a variety of topics, from courses on early modern Europe and the world to global history courses on love and sexuality.