John W. Barker

A history professor and music lover, John W. Barker authored numerous articles and books. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he was descended from a Mayflower bondservant on his mother’s side and, on his father’s side, Kentucky tobacco plantation owners and Confederate soldiers.

He received his Ph.D from Rutgers University and spent three fellowship years at Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks before joining the history faculty at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Dedicated to early Christian and eastern Mediterranean history he concentrated on Byzantium, the Crusades, and Venice. Barker’s first book, Justinian and the Later Roman Empire, was prized as being the best book published in Wisconsin in the year 1967 and his Manuel II Palaeologus remains a seminal treatise on this important Byzantium emperor.

With a love for classical music and opera John Barker was a staff reviewer for The American Record Guide for 62 years, a broadcaster on Madison public radio and other stations, and regularly wove music into his historical teaching. After retirement from the University he wrote two books on Richard Wagner’s relationship with Venice as well as a history of the Pro Arte Quartet.

John W. Barker died in October of 2019. His wife Margaret B. Barker wrote Newspaper Real Estate Schemes of the 1920s: Pell Lake and Other Vacation Colonies for Working Class Subscribers, which is scheduled for publication in January of 2021.