Wayne Lee
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Wayne Lee is Bruce W. Carney Distinguished Professor in the department of history, former chair of the curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense, and research associate, UNC Research Laboratories of Archaeology, at the University of North Carolina. He specializes in early modern military history, with a particular focus on North America and the Atlantic World, including warfare in colonial America, among Native Americans, and around the British empire, but he teaches military history from a full global perspective. His works of history include: Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina: The Culture of Violence in Riot and War (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001); Barbarians and Brothers: Anglo-American Warfare, 1500-1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Waging War: Conflict, Culture and Innovation in World History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Wayne E. Lee, David L. Preston, David Silbey, and Anthony E. Carlson, The Other Face of Battle: America’s Forgotten Wars and the Experience of Combat (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), and, as editor, Warfare and Culture in World History, 2nd edition (New York: NYU Press, 2020), along with a multitude of articles and book chapters. He also he works with archaeology projects in the Balkans and has numerous publications in that field. Professor Lee was a combat engineer officer in the U.S. Army and served in Germany (patrolling the old Cold War border), Virginia, and in the Gulf War. He is also a blacksmith, a whitewater kayaker, and a traditional archer.
Undergraduate Syllabi
Global History of Warfare
Historians are increasingly interested in the movement of ideas, goods, and even institutions from one society to another. "World" history has long been defined as the study of connections--connections often invisible when societies are examined only from within a national or even regional perspective. The point of doing world history is not merely to be comparative (examining, for example, feudalism in Japan compared to feudalism in Europe), but to explore the many ways that human societies are constantly responding to change around them, often change generated by activities of which they have no knowledge. Military phenomena are a crucial component of this story. Change or innovation by one society that proves more effective than its neighbors often produces a ripple effect in surrounding societies as they try to adapt to the changing threats. Change also can proceed along global lines of connection independent of a sense of threat. Exploring the process of global military interaction and response to innovation is complicated. Traditionally the field has been defined by the study of the movement of technology. But military historians are increasingly interested in the spread of ideas as well. This course will examine the broad sweep of human military experience on a global scale, focusing on innovations through the themes of precedent, connections, and legacy. We will not try to construct a single narrative of military experience, nor will we try to examine every society at every time. Although broadly inclusive of many times and places, we will follow several innovations in military practice as their implications careened around the globe.
Introduction for Peace & Security Studies
This course is the “gateway” course to the major in Peace, War, and Defense. It is designed as an interdisciplinary introduction to some of the basic principles in peace studies and security studies. Because of my own expertise, it is heavily weighted toward the causes and conduct of war, especially in the past, but it also includes examinations of international relations, peacemaking, and the public perception and representation of war and “security” issues. Fundamentally this course is designed to acquaint you with the complexity of defining and then pursuing "security." There are no hard and fast lessons from the past, but understanding its complexity can give us a greater maturity in our approach to the problems of the present. The readings and lectures for this class are designed to take you on a very wide tour of human approaches to security. By the end of the semester we’ll be focusing rather narrowly on the present problems facing the United States, but you will do best, both in your thinking and in your assignments, if you gather evidence widely, and think carefully.