Alfred Erich Senn is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

University of Wisconsin–Madison

The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...

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Senn was born to Swiss philologist and lexicographer, Alfred Senn. His father taught at the University of Lithuania

Vytautas Magnus University

Vytautas Magnus University ) is a public university in Kaunas, Lithuania. The university was founded in 1922 during the interwar period as an alternate national university...

, where he met his future wife. After they married, they moved to the United States 1930–1931, along with two daughters. Alfred E. Senn was born in the United States.

Senn received a BA in 1953 from the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

 and then an MA in 1955 and a Ph.D. in 1958 from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in East European history. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison since 1961, from which he retired as professor emeritus.

Senn is the author of eight books, several monographs, and numerous scholarly articles. Many of his works center on the history of Lithuania

History of Lithuania

The history of Lithuania dates back to at least 1009, the first recorded written use of the term. Lithuanians, a branch of the Baltic peoples, later conquered neighboring lands, establishing the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and in the 13th century the short-lived Kingdom of Lithuania. The Grand Duchy...

. His book, Gorbachev’s Failure in Lithuania, was awarded the Edgar Anderson Presidential Prize by the American Association of Baltic Studies in 1996.

Works

• Lithuania 1940: Revolution from Above. Amsterdam: Ropodi, 2007. ISBN 9789042022256
• Power, Politics, and the Olympic Games. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1999. ISBN 9780880119580
• Gorbachev's Failure in Lithuania. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995. ISBN 9780312124571
• Lithuania Awakening. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. ISBN 9780520071704
• Assassination in Switzerland: The Murder of Vatslav Vorovsky. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981. ISBN 9780299085506
• Jonas Basanavičius, the Patriarch of the Lithuanian National Renaissance. Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1980. ISBN 9780892502516
• Nicholas Rubakin: A Life for Books. Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1977. ISBN 9780892501250
• Diplomacy and Revolution: the Soviet Mission to Switzerland, 1918. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974. ISBN 9780268005412
• The Russian Revolution in Switzerland, 1914-1917. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971. ISBN 9780299059415
• The Great Powers, Lithuania and the Vilna Question 1920-1928. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1966.
• The Emergence of Modern Lithuania. New York: Columbia University Press, 1959.

Sources

• Alfred Erich Senn – short bio