Other Writing

During the First World War, on a small university campus in the Midwest, the Army initiates a secret project to develop a machine to compute the precise trajectories of artillery shells. Three professors - Alan Fendick in agricultural engineering, Oona Houellebecq in mathematics and Leslie Ford in physics are recruited for the task. But then the machine does something unexpected and the project abruptly ends. Was the machine a failure? Or was the problem with the humans who built it?

Dog 137 is set in 1917 when the US became involved in the First World War. The protagonist, named Einleff, is a homeless seventeen-year-old. He becomes a participant in chemical warfare experiments at a medical school, in which dogs are being asphyxiated with poison gases being developed for the war.

In this excerpt from the novel, Einleff has his first meeting with Professor Foss, who is leading the experiments. Einleff is accompanied by Eugenia Temple, Foss’s student, who is anxious to have...

A short story set in 1918. Callista Bishop, a patient at a small, rural psychiatric institute, has suffered a breakdown. Her fiancé, Jack Blackman, a soldier, is receiving psychiatric treatment at a military hospital overseas. Something is seriously wrong with Jack. Callista wonders, "Can the soul become disoriented? Perhaps get lost completely?"

A history of the building’s unsavory reputation and abandoned sixth floor.

Syphilis, sleeping sickness, and the casualties of a hunt for a cure.

Sleeping sickness research at the University of Wisconsin and its ties to colonialism.

World War I-era poison gas testing at UW-Madison leaves a legacy at once extensive and obscure.

Science Hall's oldest relief model undergoes a painstaking conservation effort, healing the ravages of time.

Howard Veregin, Wisconsin State Cartographer, University of Wisconsin–Madison