John W. Barker
John Walton Barker (October 7, 1933 – October 24, 2019) was an American historian who specialized in Byzantine history and classical music. He wrote several important works on Byzantium, including Justinian and the Later Roman Empire (1966) and Manuel II Palaeologus: 1391–1425: A Study in Late Byzantine Statesmanship (1969). Later in his career, he published books on Richard Wagner: Wagner and Venice (2008) and Wagner and Venice Fictionalized: Variations on a Theme (2012).
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Barker earned a BA from Brooklyn College (1955) and an MA and PhD from Rutgers University (1956, 1961). He spent three fellowship years (1959–1962) at Harvard's Dumbarton Oaks before joining the History Department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he taught until retiring in 1999. He focused his teaching and research on medieval Europe, especially Byzantium, the Crusades, and Venetian history. In 1975 he helped found the Byzantine Studies Conference.
Barker enjoyed travel and led educational tours to Turkey, Greece, Italy, and Sicily. He was a devoted connoisseur of classical music, particularly opera and Handel’s oratorios. He reviewed for the American Record Guide for 62 years and collected more than 110,000 classical recordings. He wrote music criticism for Madison journals, served as a staff reviewer for Isthmus since 2001, and was a regular broadcaster on early-music programming for WHA/WERN and WORT’s Musica Antiqua. He co-founded UW Opera Props and produced 61 issues of The Prompter (1981–2006) for University productions. Barker also sang in local choirs, including the Assumption Greek Orthodox Church choir in Madison for 47 years.
He was married to Margaret B. Barker (née Grabowski), a retired attorney and author. John Barker passed away in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2019 and is buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 23:26 (CET).