Faculty & Staff
Interested in connecting with someone in the Department?
Check out History Department Office Hours.
Tenure-Track Faculty
Isaac Peter Campos
Professor, History
320D ARTSCI
Professor Campos teaches Latin American history. His main expertise is in modern Mexico and the history of illicit drugs. He's especially interested in the history of ideas, culture, and transnational phenomena. These interests are reflected in his newsletter, History on Drugs, which brings scholarly work to a more general audience, his digital history website, The Drug Page, which pursues a similar objective, and his book Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico's War on Drugs (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), which examines the development of marijuana's reputation for causing madness and violence in Mexico from the sixteenth century down to its nationwide prohibition in 1920. Professor Campos has also worked for the National Security Archive where he did research on Mexico’s “dirty war” of the 1970s, Cuban-Mexican relations, and the War on Drugs since 1969. He teaches a variety of classes, from introductory surveys to graduate seminars.
Wayne K. Durrill
Professor, History
355 ARTSCI
Prof. Durrill’s principal publications in American history include War of Another Kind: A Southern Community in the Great Rebellion (Oxford University Press, 1990), plus several articles and chapters on nineteenth century American social history in Varieties of Southern Religious History (2014), Nineteenth Century American History (2008), Journal of Social History (2006, 2002), Journal of Southern History (2004, 1999), Slavery and Abolition (2024, 1995, 1992), and the Journal of American History (1985). From 2000 to 2005, he also co-edited with Christopher Phillips the journal Ohio Valley History. Prof. Durrill has also published two articles on nineteenth century African history in the Journal of African History ( 2000) and the American Historical Review (1986). In 1996, he was a Fulbright professor at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. His research has been supported by fellowships and major grants from the Taft Research Center at UC (2008, 1995), the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (2006), the Spencer Foundation (1997, 1992), the Fulbright Board (1995) the National Academy of Education (1993), the American Council of Learned Societies (1990), and the Smithsonian Institution (1986). In 1997, Prof. Durrill received a University Faculty Achievement Award for Excellence in Research. And in 1984, he received the Louis Pelzer Memorial Award from the Organization of American Historicans. Prof. Durrill has recently completed a book manuscript titled: "The Great Resistance: Attacking Slavery in the Age of Nat Turner." He is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled "Cake Walk: An Episode in Seeking Cultural Power in Gilded Age America."
Elizabeth B. Frierson
Associate Professor , History
340A ARTSCI
Professor Frierson came to the study of the Middle East and North Africa after beginning to see the wide gap between reality in the Middle East and U.S. perceptions of the region in the early 1980's. She took her B.A. in Comparative Religion from the University of Vermont and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. She has published several articles on late-Ottoman politics and society, co-edited with Camron Amin and Benjamin C. Fortna The Modern Middle East: A Sourcebook for History (Oxford University Press), and is finishing a manuscript entitled Patriarchal Feminism for Syracuse University Press. She has received several fellowships and awards for research, development of teaching materials, and acquisition of library materials for UC, including from Fulbright, Fulbright-Hays, and the American Research Institute in Turkey, and has been an invited speaker and workshop participant in the U.S., Turkey, Israel, and Europe, as well as a visiting fellow at Middle East Technical University (Ankara), Hacettepe University (Ankara), Cornell University, UCSB, Princeton University. Her Ph.D. students have been Carole Woodall and Lerna Ekmekcioglu of NYU, Julia Phillips Cohen of Stanford, Ufuk Adak and Ali el-Tarhuni at the University of Cincinnati, and Harry Bastermajian of the University of Chicago. She has served on fellowship committees for the American Research Institute in Turkey, the Institute of Turkish Studies, the Social Science Research Council, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and served for two years as a mentor to the Mellon-funded Minority Access to Research Careers summer program at Princeton. She speaks frequently to community groups and the media about the history of the Middle East and North Africa, and current events. Her current research focuses on refugee management in WWI, and the changes in science, personnel, and practices of pharmacology in the 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe and the Middle East.
Sigrun Haude
Walter C. Langsam Professor of European History, History
320B ARTSCI
Professor Haude’s research specialty is the early modern period in European history, especially the era of the Reformation from its roots in the later Middle Ages to its fierce ending in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). She has written on the Radical Reformation, the role of Gender among Anabaptists and Spiritualists, and on society & the Thirty Years' War. Her most recent publication, Coping with Life during the Thirty Years' War (Leiden: Brill, 2021), explores how seventeenth-century contemporaries survived this long war with its many detrimental repercussions.
Robert J Haug
Associate Professor, Director of Undergraduate Advising, History, History
331 ARTSCI
Prof. Haug received his BA in Geography and History from DePaul University in 1999, his MA in Modern Middle Eastern and North African Studies from the University of Michigan in 2002, and his PhD in Near Eastern Studies also from the University of Michigan in 2010. Prof. Haug came to the University of Cincinnati's History Department in 2010 where he has taught survey courses in World and Middle Eastern History as well as the history of Iran and a variety of upper level courses on the history of the Islamic World including courses on the `Abbasid Caliphate, the Crusades, the history of Afghanistan and Central Asia, and the interaction between nomadic and agrarian societies. His research interests focus on the history of the early Islamic World (7th-13th centuries) with a special interest on the Iranian World and Central Asia. He is the author of The Eastern Froniter: Limits of Empire in Late Antique and Early Medieval Central Asia, published by I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury in 2019. His current research project focuses on representations of masculinity in medieval chronicles with special focus on accounts of the conquest of Iran and Central Asia.
Jason N. Krupar
Associate Professor, History
310E ARTSCI
Dr. Jason Krupar earned his Ph.D. in American Social Policy History from Case Western Reserve University in 2000. He taught for eight years at the OMI College of Applied Science, University of Cincinnati, before joining the History Department faculty in Spring, 2010. He specializes in history of technology and science policy, history of engineering, history of the Manhattan Project, and Cold War technology/science policy. He co-authored a book chapter in Nuclear Legacies: Communication, Controversy, and the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex that examined several case studies of grass-roots attempts to preserve the memory of the nation’s nuclear arsenal. This book received the 2008 Christine L. Oravac Book Award sponsored by the Environmental Communication Division of the National Communication Association. He authored a book chapter that appeared in, The Atomic Bomb and American Society: New Perspectives, published by University of Tennessee Press in Spring 2009. He has had articles published in Public History, Technology and Culture and the Ohio Valley History Journal. He has reviewed manuscripts for several professional journals, university presses, and written book reviews for multiple journals. His current research project involves investigating the creation of the Atomic River Valley. He is also co-editor of the Ohio Valley History Journal.
Man Bun Kwan
Associate Professor, History
303 ARTSCI
Professor Kwan specializes in modern China, particularly its business, economic, legal, and social history. When traveling in China, he enjoys rummaging through local markets for land deeds and contracts. His "Salt Wars" has been published by Hawaii University Press, 2022.
Brianna N. Leavitt-Alcántara
Associate Professor, History
ARTSCI
Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara teaches Latin American History, specializing in the colonial period and nineteenth century. Her research focuses on gender and religion in colonial and nineteenth-century Central America. Her book, Alone at the Altar: Single Women and Devotion in Guatemala, 1670-1870 (Stanford University Press, 2018), considers how non-elite single women forged complex alliances with the Catholic Church in Guatemala's colonial capital, and how those alliances significantly shaped local religion and the spiritual economy, late colonial reform efforts, and post-Independence politics. Her new book project, The Virgin's Wrath, examines gender relations, Mayan Catholicism, and violence in eighteenth-century Chiapas. She teaches survey courses on colonial Latin America as well as upper division courses on topics such as gender, religion, the Spanish Inquisition, and Afro-Latin America.
Susan Longfield Karr
Associate Professor, Department of History Affiliate Associate Professor, SPIA, History
310C ARTSCI
Above all, my teaching and research focus on state- and empire-state formation and the emergence of the so-called modern rule of law within communities (constitutions) and between them (international law) from about the 15th century to the present. In addition to offering courses on the European Renaissance, Early Modern France, and Britain, I also teach various courses that explore the history and development of rights—natural, civil, and human--from the early modern to the modern era. However, instead of approaching the history of rights as a history of progress, I explore it as a history of conflict. In so doing, I pay particular attention to the meaning and significance of words within cultural, political, and legal frameworks. For example, my current research project focuses on how languages of tolerance, which we tend to equate with acceptance, were often used in the early modern era to justify empire abroad and construct gradations of citizenship and inequality at home.
Maura O’Connor
Associate Professor, History
320E ARTSCI
The comparative focus of my research and writing is the social and cultural history of Britain and its Empire, across c18th-c20th, and encompassing France, Italy, and the United States. I also have keen interdisciplinary interests that range from literature and the performing arts to economics and neuroscience. I teach a wide variety of classes at both the undergraduate and graduate levels that explore these interests. After graduating from Mount Holyoke College, I taught history and literature in secondary schools in the Bronx and Surrey, England and worked for an investment firm in San Francisco, the year before starting graduate school at UC Berkeley.
My current book project reflects an ongoing curiosity about cultures of finance capitalism. It attempts to write a cultural history of risk and speculation by assessing how capital moved across all kinds of borders and boundaries around the 'stock-jobbing globe' during the nineteenth century. Titled "Risking the World: The London Stock Exchange and the British Financial Empire, 1801-1910," it tells the story of the world of international finance, the culture of risk capital, and the gendered politics of speculating and investing in the British Empire from the Napoleonic Wars when the financial center shifted from Amsterdam to London to the aftermath of the South African War when London's financial supremacy was seriously challenged.
I have another book in the making, this one, a collection of essays. "Desire in the Archive," is about grief, the body, intimacy and desire, characters in nineteenth century novels and the metaphorical arc of time's passage in coming to terms with loss. Part memoir and part historian’s meditation, this book attempts to use the tools of our trade and the particular idioms of history to analyze houses with their shifting perspectives in place and time; the evidence of (personal) experience and to explore, at the same time, the ways in which memories and emotions become embodied in representations and material culture as well as embedded in the landscape.
My current book project reflects an ongoing curiosity about cultures of finance capitalism. It attempts to write a cultural history of risk and speculation by assessing how capital moved across all kinds of borders and boundaries around the 'stock-jobbing globe' during the nineteenth century. Titled "Risking the World: The London Stock Exchange and the British Financial Empire, 1801-1910," it tells the story of the world of international finance, the culture of risk capital, and the gendered politics of speculating and investing in the British Empire from the Napoleonic Wars when the financial center shifted from Amsterdam to London to the aftermath of the South African War when London's financial supremacy was seriously challenged.
I have another book in the making, this one, a collection of essays. "Desire in the Archive," is about grief, the body, intimacy and desire, characters in nineteenth century novels and the metaphorical arc of time's passage in coming to terms with loss. Part memoir and part historian’s meditation, this book attempts to use the tools of our trade and the particular idioms of history to analyze houses with their shifting perspectives in place and time; the evidence of (personal) experience and to explore, at the same time, the ways in which memories and emotions become embodied in representations and material culture as well as embedded in the landscape.
Shailaja D Paik
Taft Distinguished Professor of History and Affiliate Faculty in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Asian Studies, History
340 B ARTSCI
I am the Charles Phelphs Taft Distinguished Research Professor of History and Affiliate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Sociology, and Asian Studies. I am 2024 MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Fellow. My research, writing, and teaching interests lie at the intersection of a number of fields: modern South Asia; Dalit studies; women's, gender, and sexuality studies; social and political movements; oral history; human rights and humanitarianism. As a historian, I specialize in the social, intellectual, and cultural history of modern India. My first book Dalit Women's Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination (Routledge, 2014 ) examines the nexus between caste, class, gender, and state pedagogical practices among Dalit ("Untouchable") women in urban India. My second book, The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India (Stanford University Press, 2022 https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=34163) analyzes the politics of caste, class, gender, sexuality, and popular culture in modern Maharashtra. The book won the American Historical Association's John F. Richards Prize for "the most distinguished work of scholarship on South Asia" (https://www.historians.org/award-grant/john-f-richards-prize/) and the Association of Asian Studies Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Prize (https://www.asianstudies.org/aas-2024-prizes/). I am working on several new book projects: Caste Domination and Normative Sexuality in Modern India, Caste, Race, and Indigeneity in and beyond South Asia, and the Cambridge Companion to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. My research is funded by the MacArthur Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, Stanford Humanities Center, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Institute of Indian Studies, Yale University, Emory University, the Ford Foundation, and the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center, among others. I have published several articles on a variety of themes, including the politics of naming, Dalit and African American women, Dalit women’s education, new Dalit womanhood, and kissing and nationalism in prestigious international journals. My scholarship and research interests focus on anti-colonial struggles, transnational women’s history, women-of-color feminisms, and particularly on gendering caste and subaltern history. I co-organized the "Fifth International Conference on the Unfinished Legacy of Dr. Ambedkar" at the New School of Social Research and I direct the "Ambedkar-King Justice Initiative" at the University of Cincinnati.
Christopher Phillips
John and Dorothy Hermanies Professor of American History and University Distinguished Professor in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, History
335C ARTSCI
My research interests and teaching fields are in American history, especially the Nineteenth Century, American South, Borderlands, War and Society, and the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction. In 2023 the Ohio Academy of History honored me with its Distinguished Professor Award.
I was raised in the Midwest and educated there and in the South, and so I have a particular interest in American regions and I have published a number of books and essays on the Civil War era. My particular focus has been in the Border States, whether slave states that did not secede from the Union or free states that were deeply divided before and during the American Civil War and in its aftermath.
My published books have focused variously on slavery and freedom, emancipation, war, race, politics, and memory during and after the Civil War era. They include Damned Yankee, a study of the military and political events in the border slave state of Missouri through the life of a controversial military commander there; Freedom's Port, a social history of the African American community of Baltimore, Maryland, in the early national and antebellum periods; Missouri's Confederate, the life and political career of a controversial Missouri Civil War governor as a lens into the development of southern identity in the Border West; The Union on Trial and The Making of a Southerner, the edited political journals and classroom-length companion biography of a northern-born Missouri supreme court justice in the mid-nineteenth century, which together assess the development of proslavery ideology in the American West; and more recently The Civil War in the Border South, a brief social and cultural history of the Civil War and its aftermath in the border slave states.
My most recent book, The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border (Oxford University Press, 2016), examines the fluid political cultures of the "Middle Border" states during the Civil War era. The war there was one fought within the peoples and populations of the West, rather than between the sections, and permanently reshaped American regional identities. The book has received a number of awards and recognitions, including the 2017 Tom Watson Brown Prize for the best published book on the Civil War from the Society of Civil War Historians; the 2018 Distinguished Book Award from the Society of Military Historians; the 2017 Jon Gjerde Book Prize, the Midwestern History Association's top award given for a book on midwestern regional history; the 2017 Distinguished Book Award by the Ohio Academy of History; and the 2017 Missouri History Book Award from the State Historical Society of Missouri. It was named a Best Book of 2016 by Civil War Monitor, a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2017, and was a finalist for the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Non-fiction. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-rivers-ran-backward-9780195187236?cc=us〈=en&#
I have published dozens of peer reviewed and invited essays in such venues as Civil War History, Journal of the Civil War Era, and The New York Times. As a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, my work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Antiquarian Society (in which I am an elected member), among others. In 2013 I was a Fulbright scholar in the Czech Republic. I live in Glendale, Ohio, the nation's first planned community (1855) with my wife, Jill, a high school mathem
I was raised in the Midwest and educated there and in the South, and so I have a particular interest in American regions and I have published a number of books and essays on the Civil War era. My particular focus has been in the Border States, whether slave states that did not secede from the Union or free states that were deeply divided before and during the American Civil War and in its aftermath.
My published books have focused variously on slavery and freedom, emancipation, war, race, politics, and memory during and after the Civil War era. They include Damned Yankee, a study of the military and political events in the border slave state of Missouri through the life of a controversial military commander there; Freedom's Port, a social history of the African American community of Baltimore, Maryland, in the early national and antebellum periods; Missouri's Confederate, the life and political career of a controversial Missouri Civil War governor as a lens into the development of southern identity in the Border West; The Union on Trial and The Making of a Southerner, the edited political journals and classroom-length companion biography of a northern-born Missouri supreme court justice in the mid-nineteenth century, which together assess the development of proslavery ideology in the American West; and more recently The Civil War in the Border South, a brief social and cultural history of the Civil War and its aftermath in the border slave states.
My most recent book, The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border (Oxford University Press, 2016), examines the fluid political cultures of the "Middle Border" states during the Civil War era. The war there was one fought within the peoples and populations of the West, rather than between the sections, and permanently reshaped American regional identities. The book has received a number of awards and recognitions, including the 2017 Tom Watson Brown Prize for the best published book on the Civil War from the Society of Civil War Historians; the 2018 Distinguished Book Award from the Society of Military Historians; the 2017 Jon Gjerde Book Prize, the Midwestern History Association's top award given for a book on midwestern regional history; the 2017 Distinguished Book Award by the Ohio Academy of History; and the 2017 Missouri History Book Award from the State Historical Society of Missouri. It was named a Best Book of 2016 by Civil War Monitor, a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2017, and was a finalist for the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Non-fiction. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-rivers-ran-backward-9780195187236?cc=us〈=en&#
I have published dozens of peer reviewed and invited essays in such venues as Civil War History, Journal of the Civil War Era, and The New York Times. As a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, my work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Antiquarian Society (in which I am an elected member), among others. In 2013 I was a Fulbright scholar in the Czech Republic. I live in Glendale, Ohio, the nation's first planned community (1855) with my wife, Jill, a high school mathem
Stephen Porter
Associate Professor, History
301C ARTSCI
Steve Porter explores the intersection of humanitarianism and U.S. power over the long twentieth century as experienced both internationally and domestically. He is particularly interested in the ways that state and civil society actors have collaborated, harmoniously and otherwise, in innovative governing and legal initiatives seeking to justify themselves significantly through an embrace of ethical rationales. He has considered these issues in his book Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World’s Dispossessed (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), published essays and professional presentations. Benevolent Empire is the winner of the 2018 Hall award, given for the best book on the history of civil society, philanthropy and/or the non-profit sector, any country or region. Central to his research interests are changing conceptions of ethical responsibilities and rights along with the management refugee crises and other humanitarian dilemmas wrought by war, persecution, upheaval, and other disruptive phenomena so emblematic of the modern world order. These efforts include both international aid and legal initiatives on behalf of vulnerable populations abroad and immigration programs to systematically resettle select groups of political refugees admitted to the U.S.
The working title of his current book project is, “Liberalism and Humanitarianism at War: American Approaches to National and Human Security Crises in World War II.”
At the University of Cincinnati, he has served as director of the International Human Rights Certificate, chair of the Tolley Scholarship in International Human Rights, chair of the Taft Center’s Human Rights Research Group, and, beginning in fall of 2024, Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of History. A former fellow of the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and chair of ARNOVA's Hall Book Award Committee, he has a PhD in History from the University of Chicago.
Professor Porter’s research interests inform his teaching, and vice versa. The courses he has taught include:
Undergraduate
The working title of his current book project is, “Liberalism and Humanitarianism at War: American Approaches to National and Human Security Crises in World War II.”
At the University of Cincinnati, he has served as director of the International Human Rights Certificate, chair of the Tolley Scholarship in International Human Rights, chair of the Taft Center’s Human Rights Research Group, and, beginning in fall of 2024, Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of History. A former fellow of the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and chair of ARNOVA's Hall Book Award Committee, he has a PhD in History from the University of Chicago.
Professor Porter’s research interests inform his teaching, and vice versa. The courses he has taught include:
Undergraduate
- U.S. History surveys (all sequences)
- Human Rights and Security
- War, Peace, and Society
- U.S. Foreign Relations II
- Human Rights and Foreign Relations I & II
- Refugees and Immigration (various names/iterations and levels)
- U.S. and Middle East/N. Africa: Immigration and Human Rights (co-taught)
- War and (American) Society
- War on the American Home Front
- Immigration Across the Disciplines (honors course with travel)
- Human Rights in History (co-taught)
- Introduction to Historical Thinking (for majors)
- Research Topics (for majors)
- History Research Capstone (for majors)
- Historical Methodologies
- Teaching Practicum
- U.S. in the Long 20th Century
- U.S. and the World
- Ethics and U.S. Power in the World
- Human Rights and Humanitarianism
- Research Seminar
Mark A. Raider
Professor, History
301A ARTSCI
Dr. Mark A. Raider is Professor of Modern Jewish History in the Department of History (College of Arts & Sciences) and Director of the Center for Studies in Jewish Education and Culture (College of Education). He is past President of the University's Academy of Fellows for Teaching and Learning. He serves as Visiting Professor of American Jewish History at the Cincinnati campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
Dr. Raider earned his BA at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1988 and his Master's and PhD degrees at Brandeis University in 1993 and 1996, respectively. He also studied at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Before joining the University of Cincinnati, he was the Founding Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York from 2000 to 2006. From 2007 to 2012, he served as Director of the Posen Foundation Education Project, a countrywide interdisciplinary teacher education initiative for middle school and high school teachers interested in Jewish history, culture, and literature.
Dr. Raider's articles have appeared in various anthologies and scholarly journals including the American Jewish Archives Journal, American Jewish History, CCAR Journal, Iyunim betkumat yisrael, Jewish Social Studies, Journal of Israeli History, Judaism, Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish History, and elsewhere.
Dr. Raider’s books are New Perspectives in American Jewish History: A Documentary Tribute to Jonathan D. Sarna, with Gary Phillip Zola (Brandeis University Press, 2021); The Essential Hayim Greenberg: Essays and Addresses on Jewish Culture, Socialism, and Zionism (University of Alabama Press, 2017); Nahum Goldmann: Statesman Without a State (State University of New York Press, 2009); American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise, with Shulamit Reinharz (Brandeis University Press, 2005); The Plough Woman: Records of the Pioneer Women of Palestine. A Critical Edition, with Miriam B. Raider-Roth (Brandeis University Press, 2002); The Emergence of American Zionism (New York University Press, 1998); and Abba Hillel Silver and American Zionism, with Jonathan D. Sarna and Ronald W. Zweig (Frank Cass, 1997). He completed a book-length history of the American Jewish experience for the prize-winning second edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica (vol. 20, 2006).
Dr. Raider is currently working on two book projects. The Israeli Hero in the American Mind: The Changing Image of Zionism and Israel in American Culture examines the protean trope of the Zionist and Israeli hero from roughly the fin-de-siecle until today. This study traces the evolution of American society’s perception of the archetype of the Jewish hero – from the latter’s biblical significance to its modern-day complexity. America’s Rabbi: Stephen S. Wise is a biographical study of one of the twentieth century’s most important American Jewish and Zionist leaders. Closely associated with Louis D. Brandeis, Woodrow Wilson, Felix Frankfurter, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Stephen S. Wise (1874-1949) played a key role in American and world Jewish affairs as well as the founding of the State of Israel.
Dr. Raider teaches courses on modern Jewish history, American Jewish history, U.S. history, American religious history, American cultural history, pedagogy, and research methods.
Dr. Raider earned his BA at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1988 and his Master's and PhD degrees at Brandeis University in 1993 and 1996, respectively. He also studied at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Before joining the University of Cincinnati, he was the Founding Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York from 2000 to 2006. From 2007 to 2012, he served as Director of the Posen Foundation Education Project, a countrywide interdisciplinary teacher education initiative for middle school and high school teachers interested in Jewish history, culture, and literature.
Dr. Raider's articles have appeared in various anthologies and scholarly journals including the American Jewish Archives Journal, American Jewish History, CCAR Journal, Iyunim betkumat yisrael, Jewish Social Studies, Journal of Israeli History, Judaism, Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish History, and elsewhere.
Dr. Raider’s books are New Perspectives in American Jewish History: A Documentary Tribute to Jonathan D. Sarna, with Gary Phillip Zola (Brandeis University Press, 2021); The Essential Hayim Greenberg: Essays and Addresses on Jewish Culture, Socialism, and Zionism (University of Alabama Press, 2017); Nahum Goldmann: Statesman Without a State (State University of New York Press, 2009); American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise, with Shulamit Reinharz (Brandeis University Press, 2005); The Plough Woman: Records of the Pioneer Women of Palestine. A Critical Edition, with Miriam B. Raider-Roth (Brandeis University Press, 2002); The Emergence of American Zionism (New York University Press, 1998); and Abba Hillel Silver and American Zionism, with Jonathan D. Sarna and Ronald W. Zweig (Frank Cass, 1997). He completed a book-length history of the American Jewish experience for the prize-winning second edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica (vol. 20, 2006).
Dr. Raider is currently working on two book projects. The Israeli Hero in the American Mind: The Changing Image of Zionism and Israel in American Culture examines the protean trope of the Zionist and Israeli hero from roughly the fin-de-siecle until today. This study traces the evolution of American society’s perception of the archetype of the Jewish hero – from the latter’s biblical significance to its modern-day complexity. America’s Rabbi: Stephen S. Wise is a biographical study of one of the twentieth century’s most important American Jewish and Zionist leaders. Closely associated with Louis D. Brandeis, Woodrow Wilson, Felix Frankfurter, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Stephen S. Wise (1874-1949) played a key role in American and world Jewish affairs as well as the founding of the State of Israel.
Dr. Raider teaches courses on modern Jewish history, American Jewish history, U.S. history, American religious history, American cultural history, pedagogy, and research methods.
Katherine E Sorrels
Professor of History
Affiliate Faculty, Judaic Studies
,
History
353C ARTSCI
Personal Website
Katherine Sorrels is an Associate Professor of History, Affiliate Faculty in Judaic Studies, and Chair of the Taft Health Humanities Research Group at the University of Cincinnati. Her research interests are in modern European and North American history of medicine, disability, and the Jewish experience. She is also involved in a number of digital and public humanities projects. She teaches on the history of health and medicine, eugenics and Nazi medical abuses, scientific racism, and disability history, as well as several courses on the Holocaust, migration, and the refugee experience.
Her current book project is On the Spectrum: Refugees from Nazi Austria and the Politics of Disability and Belonging in the Britain and North America. Her focus is on the Camphill movement, an international network of intentional communities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities that was founded in Scotland during WWII by Austrian Jewish refugees. Through Camphill, she reconstructs the larger story of how Austrian refugees transformed British and North American approaches to disability after the Holocaust. Her research is based on archival work and oral histories in Austria, Britain, the United States, and Canada. She was interviewed on this project for two Botstiber Foundation podcasts, which can be found here: Episode 1; Episode 2.
On the Spectrum extends work on antisemitism, scientific racism, and internationalism in 20th century Central and Eastern European Jewish history that she explored in her first book, Cosmopolitan Outsiders: Imperial Inclusion, National Exclusion, and the Pan-European Idea, 1900-1930 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). She has also published on Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jewry, Medical and Digital Humanities, and disability history and theory. This includes articles and two co-edited volumes: Disability in German-Speaking Europe: History, Memory, Culture (Camden House, 2022) and Ohio under COVID: Lessons from America's Heartland in Crisis (University of Michigan Press, 2023). Ohio under COVID is also avialable in an open-access, digital edition here: https://www.press.umich.edu//12396322
When Sorrels is not working, she is usually gardening, listening to gardening podcasts, reading gardening books, and watching gardening shows. Her enthusiasm sometimes outpaces her talent (there have been casualties) but she continues to dig in the dirt.
Anne Delano Steinert
Asst Professor - Research, History
301B ARTSCI
Anne Delano Steinert studies public history and the history of the built environment with a focus on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Cincinnati. She is the Charles Phelps Taft Center 2025-2027 Professor of Social Justice and is the Director of the Center for the City. Steinert is also the founder of Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine Museum and curator of the Look Here!, Schools for the City, and Finding Kenyon Barr exhibitions among others. Dr. Steinert currently leads a team of community historians who will be building a mulit-modal public history exhibtiion through the Avondale History Project
David S Stradling
Zane L. Miller Professor of Urban History; Interim Head, Department of History , History
360 ARTSCI
David Stradling is the Zane L. Miller Professor of Urban History and the Interim Director of the School of Environment and Sustainability. In his twenty-plus years at the University of Cincinnati, he has taught a variety of courses on urban and environmental history.
David is the author of several books, including The Nature of New York: An Environmental History of the Empire State (Cornell University Press, 2010), Making Mountains: New York City and the Catskills (University of Washington Press, 2007), Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers and Air Quality in America, 1881-1951 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), and, with Richard Stradling, Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the Struggle to Save Cleveland (Cornell University Press, 2015). He is currently writing a global history of dredging.
David earned his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1996, after having earned a BA and MAT from Colgate University. Living in Clifton, he raised two daughters with his partner Jodie, and he commutes to campus on foot through Burnet Woods.
David is the author of several books, including The Nature of New York: An Environmental History of the Empire State (Cornell University Press, 2010), Making Mountains: New York City and the Catskills (University of Washington Press, 2007), Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers and Air Quality in America, 1881-1951 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), and, with Richard Stradling, Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the Struggle to Save Cleveland (Cornell University Press, 2015). He is currently writing a global history of dredging.
David earned his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1996, after having earned a BA and MAT from Colgate University. Living in Clifton, he raised two daughters with his partner Jodie, and he commutes to campus on foot through Burnet Woods.
Willard Sunderland
Henry R. Winkler Professor of Modern History, History
360F ARTSCI
Professor Sunderland received his BA in Russian Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and his masters and doctorate in history from Indiana University, Bloomington. Since joining the department in 1996, he has taught in the fields of Russia and the Soviet Union, modern Europe, and world history.
Sunderland's principal research interests are in the history of the Russian Empire in the modern period. Over the course of his career, he has lived and traveled extensively throughout the Russian Federation as well as the other states of the former Soviet Union.
He is the author of two books and co-editor of four volumes of scholarly essays on varied topics connected to Russia's imperial history. His The Baron's Cloak: A History of the Russian Empire in War and Revolution, appeared with Cornell University Press in 2014 and was recognized with publication awards from the Association for the Study of the Nationalities (ASN), the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), and the Ohio Academy of History.
Sunderland's current book-in-progress is a travelogue/history of John Quincy Adams' voyage to Russia in 1809 as the first US ambassador appointed to the Russian court. Following John Quincy's route, Sunderland sailed to the edge of Russia himself with his friends and fellow Cincinnatians Tom and Chuck Lohre in his sailboat Clio in the summer of 2023. John Quincy's trip from Boston to St. Petersburg took 80 days. Sunderland's from Boston to Kotka, Finland, located just shy of the Russian border, took 76.
In addition, Sunderland is also working on a book focused on the history of Russia and the world in the age of Peter the Great as well as new research related to Russian maritime history, the history of the Russian Far East and Northern Pacific, and Sino-Russian relations.
From 2015 to 2022, he worked as a co-editor for the journal Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, and served from 2018 to late 2021 as academic supervisor for the international research laboratory "Russia's Regions in Historical Perspective" based at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow.
Sunderland's research has been supported by grants from a range of leading institutions and organizations including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Fulbright Scholar Program, the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Social Sciences Research Council, and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research.
Sunderland's principal research interests are in the history of the Russian Empire in the modern period. Over the course of his career, he has lived and traveled extensively throughout the Russian Federation as well as the other states of the former Soviet Union.
He is the author of two books and co-editor of four volumes of scholarly essays on varied topics connected to Russia's imperial history. His The Baron's Cloak: A History of the Russian Empire in War and Revolution, appeared with Cornell University Press in 2014 and was recognized with publication awards from the Association for the Study of the Nationalities (ASN), the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), and the Ohio Academy of History.
Sunderland's current book-in-progress is a travelogue/history of John Quincy Adams' voyage to Russia in 1809 as the first US ambassador appointed to the Russian court. Following John Quincy's route, Sunderland sailed to the edge of Russia himself with his friends and fellow Cincinnatians Tom and Chuck Lohre in his sailboat Clio in the summer of 2023. John Quincy's trip from Boston to St. Petersburg took 80 days. Sunderland's from Boston to Kotka, Finland, located just shy of the Russian border, took 76.
In addition, Sunderland is also working on a book focused on the history of Russia and the world in the age of Peter the Great as well as new research related to Russian maritime history, the history of the Russian Far East and Northern Pacific, and Sino-Russian relations.
From 2015 to 2022, he worked as a co-editor for the journal Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, and served from 2018 to late 2021 as academic supervisor for the international research laboratory "Russia's Regions in Historical Perspective" based at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow.
Sunderland's research has been supported by grants from a range of leading institutions and organizations including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Fulbright Scholar Program, the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Social Sciences Research Council, and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research.
Tracy L. Teslow
Associate Professor, History
310D ARTSCI
Tracy Teslow has taught at the University of Cincinnati since 2002. Her teaching and research focuses on race and ethnicity in the United States, especially in the twentieth century. A particular interest is the study of race in biological and anthropological sciences and its relationship to broader social, cultural and political events in America. Her other specialty is Public History, the presentation of the past through popular venues such as museums, film, and heritage sites. Her monograph, Constructing Race: The Science of Bodies and Cultures in American Anthropology (Cambridge University Press, 2014), explores the history of racial science in anthropology, natural history museums, and American culture.
Her current research project examines the role of racial science and scientists in adoption in the United States. In the 20th century child welfare workers and organizations routinely applied notions of race, derived from racial science, to children, foster families, and adoptive families. Concern with “matching” wayward children with “appropriate” families led social service workers to seek out anthropologists for their expertise. In examining the role of racial science in American adoption, my study will explore how the quotidian conceptual and methodological pragmatism of applied anthropology intersects with and often reinforced deeper philosophical, normative commitments. Matching Families: Race and Science in American Adoption asks why and how ideas about race persist in science, and what work they have done and continue to do in society. What kinds of scientific—and more importantly, social—problems has this tool been used to solve? Placing racial anthropology in a broader historical and cultural framework will enable us to better understand the historically specific roles of science, race, and biological essentialization in American society by focusing on its application in the realm of child adoption practices.
She received her B.A. in journalism from the University of Minnesota, and her M.A. in history and Ph.D. in history of science from the University of Chicago.
Her current research project examines the role of racial science and scientists in adoption in the United States. In the 20th century child welfare workers and organizations routinely applied notions of race, derived from racial science, to children, foster families, and adoptive families. Concern with “matching” wayward children with “appropriate” families led social service workers to seek out anthropologists for their expertise. In examining the role of racial science in American adoption, my study will explore how the quotidian conceptual and methodological pragmatism of applied anthropology intersects with and often reinforced deeper philosophical, normative commitments. Matching Families: Race and Science in American Adoption asks why and how ideas about race persist in science, and what work they have done and continue to do in society. What kinds of scientific—and more importantly, social—problems has this tool been used to solve? Placing racial anthropology in a broader historical and cultural framework will enable us to better understand the historically specific roles of science, race, and biological essentialization in American society by focusing on its application in the realm of child adoption practices.
She received her B.A. in journalism from the University of Minnesota, and her M.A. in history and Ph.D. in history of science from the University of Chicago.
Rebecca Shirley Wingo
Director of Public History, History
320C ARTSCI
Rebecca S. Wingo is a settler scholar of the Indigenous and American Wests, and the Director of Public History at the University of Cincinnati. Wingo’s current manuscript, Framed: Housing and Photography on the Crow Reservation, argues that federal housing policy was designed to restructure the relationships the Crows had to the house, to the land, and to each other. In conjunction with the manuscript, Wingo is working on a digital repatriation project in consultation with Crow tribal members. Wingo is currently working on two other projects: (1) a co-edited volume called American History in 15 Photographs (with Lauren Tilton, Bloomsbury Press); (2) and an ongoing collaboration with the Wyandotte Nation to better commemorate their history in the State of Ohio.
Along with Jason Heppler and Paul Schadewald, Wingo edited an open-access volume called Digital Community Engagement exploring model practices and ethical challenges of academic and community partnerships. Their volume won the 2021 Book Award from the National Council on Public History. Wingo is also the co-author of an award-winning book, Homesteading the Plains: Towards a New History.
Along with Jason Heppler and Paul Schadewald, Wingo edited an open-access volume called Digital Community Engagement exploring model practices and ethical challenges of academic and community partnerships. Their volume won the 2021 Book Award from the National Council on Public History. Wingo is also the co-author of an award-winning book, Homesteading the Plains: Towards a New History.
Jeffrey Zalar
Associate Professor of History; Ruth J. & Robert A. Conway Endowed Chair in Catholic Studies; Affiliate Faculty Member, Department of Judaic Studies, History
ARTSCI
I am a historian of religion and intellectual culture in German-speaking lands from 1770–1914. My publications address confessional relations, book and reading culture, Catholicism and science, popular religion, religion and nationalism, and other topics pertaining to religious belief and practice in modern Europe. My current project is a study of Catholics and natural science in Germany from 1830-1914.
Adjunct Faculty
Affiliate Faculty
Zvi Biener
Professor, History
5253 CLIFTCT
Dr. Biener is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati and an affiliate of the History department, the Judaic Studies department, and the Center for Public Engagement with Science.
He is Editor-in-Chief of the PhilSci-Archive and the Vice-President and President-Elect of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS).
Dr. Biener's work is in historical philosophy of science. Other work includes philosophy of data, AI, and empirical research into loneliness.
See personal website here.
He is Editor-in-Chief of the PhilSci-Archive and the Vice-President and President-Elect of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS).
Dr. Biener's work is in historical philosophy of science. Other work includes philosophy of data, AI, and empirical research into loneliness.
See personal website here.
Jennifer Ann Caplan
Assoc Professor, History
French Hall
I am a scholar of American religion and popular culture. I specialize in American Judaism and work extensively with film, television, internet media, humor, graphic novels, video games, board games, and other sites of pop culture engagement.
Jacob K. Cogan
Judge Joseph P. Kinneary Professor of Law, History
529 COLLAW
Jacob Katz Cogan teaches contracts, international business transactions, international tax, property, and public international law. He earned his JD from the Yale Law School, his MA and PhD in History from Princeton University, and his BA, magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania. Immediately prior to joining the College of Law, he served as an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State, where his responsibilities included United Nations Affairs and Law Enforcement and Intelligence. He is a recipient the Department’s Superior Honor Award.
Professor Cogan’s research focuses on the hidden assumptions, informal rules, and constitutive decisions and structures that form the operational international legal system. He also writes about the history of international law. He is the coeditor of Proceedings of the 112th Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law (2019), The Oxford Handbook of International Organizations (2016), and Looking to the Future: Essays on International Law in Honor of W. Michael Reisman (2011). Professor Cogan’s articles and essays have appeared in American Journal of International Law, the European Journal of International Law, the Harvard International Law Journal, the Journal of the History of International Law, and the Yale Journal of International Law, among many other journals. In 2010, he was awarded the Francis Deák Prize of the American Society of International Law.
Professor Cogan is the Faculty Director of the Cincinnati Center for the Global Practice of Law, the Deputy Editor of the Human Rights Quarterly, a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, an elected member of the American Law Institute, and a member of the editorial boards of the International Organizations Law Review, the Elgar International Law Series, and Oxford International Organizations. He previously served as Associate Dean of Faculty. The College of Law has recognized both his teaching and his scholarship by awarding him the Goldman Prize for Excellence in Teaching and the Harold C. Schott Scholarship Award. He is the publisher of the International Law Reporter, a widely read and relied upon blog on scholarship, events, and ideas in international law, international relations, and associated disciplines.
Professor Cogan’s research focuses on the hidden assumptions, informal rules, and constitutive decisions and structures that form the operational international legal system. He also writes about the history of international law. He is the coeditor of Proceedings of the 112th Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law (2019), The Oxford Handbook of International Organizations (2016), and Looking to the Future: Essays on International Law in Honor of W. Michael Reisman (2011). Professor Cogan’s articles and essays have appeared in American Journal of International Law, the European Journal of International Law, the Harvard International Law Journal, the Journal of the History of International Law, and the Yale Journal of International Law, among many other journals. In 2010, he was awarded the Francis Deák Prize of the American Society of International Law.
Professor Cogan is the Faculty Director of the Cincinnati Center for the Global Practice of Law, the Deputy Editor of the Human Rights Quarterly, a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, an elected member of the American Law Institute, and a member of the editorial boards of the International Organizations Law Review, the Elgar International Law Series, and Oxford International Organizations. He previously served as Associate Dean of Faculty. The College of Law has recognized both his teaching and his scholarship by awarding him the Goldman Prize for Excellence in Teaching and the Harold C. Schott Scholarship Award. He is the publisher of the International Law Reporter, a widely read and relied upon blog on scholarship, events, and ideas in international law, international relations, and associated disciplines.
Ari B Finkelstein
Associate Professor, Judaic Studies, History
3510 French Hall
Professor Finkelstein is a historian of Jews and Judaism in the Greco-Roman world. His main research focuses on the use and function of Jews and Judaism in the works of Christians and pagans in Late Antiquity. His current book project, provisionally titled “Emperor Julian and the Jews: the Use of Jews in the Making of a Pagan Empire”, based on his doctoral dissertation, examines how Emperor Julian (361-363) triangulates Jews with Christians and pagans in order to produce a pagan empire and to delegitimize Christianity. He has also written on Pseudo-Philo and Ezekiel the Tragedian. Other academic interests include Greco-Roman history, Greco-Roman thought and law, early Christianity, biblical reception, post-colonial studies, and semiotics. He also has two law degrees from McGill University.
Timothy Steven Forest
Associate Professor, History
BA MUNTZ
Dr. Timothy S. Forest is currently an associate professor in Modern European History at the University of Cincinnati – Blue Ash. His research interests lie in settler colonialism, state-directed colonization, frontiers, and issues of race, gender and identity in the British and French empires in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Janine C Hartman
Professor of History,, History
5259 CLIFTCT
Professor of
History
Dept Romance Languages and Literatures
College of Arts & Sciences
717D Old Chem Bldg
Ph 556-1596
My field is the history of ideas. Current research interests are Catulle Mendés,Parnassian poet and his role as witness to the Franco-Prussian war, the Commune insurrection and fall of Paris in 1871, as refracted through "ruin studies." Additional fields include witchcraft, ritual in early modern society and symbolic sovereignty in French colonial history..
Affliiate: History,Judaic Studies, Women & Gender Studies
History
Dept Romance Languages and Literatures
College of Arts & Sciences
717D Old Chem Bldg
Ph 556-1596
My field is the history of ideas. Current research interests are Catulle Mendés,Parnassian poet and his role as witness to the Franco-Prussian war, the Commune insurrection and fall of Paris in 1871, as refracted through "ruin studies." Additional fields include witchcraft, ritual in early modern society and symbolic sovereignty in French colonial history..
Affliiate: History,Judaic Studies, Women & Gender Studies
Frederic James Krome
Professor, History
272L CC Snyder Addition
Professor Krome received his Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati in 1992. He taught at Northern Kentucky University prior to joining the staff at the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives in 1998. He also taught classes for the Judaic Studies Program and the A & S History department. In 2007 he joined the faculty at the University of Clermont College, where he is now a Professor of History.
Marion Kruse
Associate Professor, History
220 Blegen Library
I am a Roman historian with a broad interest in ancient history and historiography, in particular the historiography of late antiquity. My early work focused on the reign of the emperor Justinian (r. 527-565 AD) and the preeminent historian of his reign, Prokopios of Kaisareia. My first book, The Politics of Roman Memory: from the Fall of the Western Empire to the Age of Justinian, explores the role narratives of Roman history played in constructing Roman identity in the eastern Roman empire after 476 AD. It posits that historical narratives were revised, redeployed, and contested as part of an ongoing debate over the nature and goals of the Roman empire, and its relationship to the city of Rome and the Gothic Kingdom in Italy.
My current work focuses on topics ranging from the textual tradition of Cassius Dio to the structure of the Roman military high command in late antiquity and the role of the Roman government in the formation of the Christian Church.
My full CV as well as samples of my publications may be found on my Academia page.
My current work focuses on topics ranging from the textual tradition of Cassius Dio to the structure of the Roman military high command in late antiquity and the role of the Roman government in the formation of the Christian Church.
My full CV as well as samples of my publications may be found on my Academia page.
Margo M Lambert
Associate Professor of History, History
275D BA MUNTZ
Holly Y McGee
Associate Professor, History
ARTSCI
Hailing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Holly Y. McGee specializes in U.S. History and African American History, with an emphasis on black women’s activist and intellectual history, comparative political activism in the United States and South Africa, and popular culture in the twentieth century. Secondary specialties include local histories of the American South, South African women’s history, and oral histories. Currently, Dr. McGee teaches undergraduate courses in black history and film, culture and counterculture, and African American history in early and colonial America.
Presently, Dr. McGee is conducting research for her book, a biographical oral history of South African activist Elizabeth Mafeking. Mafeking was one of four women featured in Dr. McGee's dissertation, “When the Window Closed: Gender, Race, and (Inter)Nationalism, the United States and South Africa, 1920s-1960s,” which put into conversation existent and new scholarship regarding black radical women of the Left in the United States and South Africa during the twentieth century and was primarily concerned with the evolution of women’s protest from localized issues of race-based discrimination to international, anti-colonial protests of the era.
Dr. McGee’s most recent publication credit, “‘It was the wrong time and they just weren’t ready’: Direct-action protest at Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical & Normal College (AM&N),” appeared as a reprint in Arsnick: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas, an edited collection on SNCC’s pivotal role in transforming the status of racial discrimination in Arkansas in the 1960s. Additionally, she has forthcoming articles in the fields of local Arkansas history, and South African women's history.
Presently, Dr. McGee is conducting research for her book, a biographical oral history of South African activist Elizabeth Mafeking. Mafeking was one of four women featured in Dr. McGee's dissertation, “When the Window Closed: Gender, Race, and (Inter)Nationalism, the United States and South Africa, 1920s-1960s,” which put into conversation existent and new scholarship regarding black radical women of the Left in the United States and South Africa during the twentieth century and was primarily concerned with the evolution of women’s protest from localized issues of race-based discrimination to international, anti-colonial protests of the era.
Dr. McGee’s most recent publication credit, “‘It was the wrong time and they just weren’t ready’: Direct-action protest at Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical & Normal College (AM&N),” appeared as a reprint in Arsnick: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas, an edited collection on SNCC’s pivotal role in transforming the status of racial discrimination in Arkansas in the 1960s. Additionally, she has forthcoming articles in the fields of local Arkansas history, and South African women's history.
Matthew D. Norman
Associate Professor of History, History
BA MUNTZ
Chris Platts
Assistant Professor, History
6489C Aronoff Center
Christopher Platts is an Assistant Professor of Art History and University Research Council Scholar (2024-2026) at the University of Cincinnati, with affiliate faculty status in the Departments of History and Romance and Arabic Languages and Literatures. In spring 2023 he received the Office of the Provost's Faculty Excellence Award for the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP), and in spring 2024 he won the Junior Faculty Award at the College of DAAP.
Research
Platts studies medieval and Renaissance European art, focusing on Italian painting and manuscript illumination, ca. 1250-1550. He is currently completing a book on Paolo Veneziano and Venetian Gothic painting as well as studies on Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Andrea Mantegna, and Attavante. Chris is interested in the style, iconography, design, and function of artworks in relation to their patrons and diverse audiences. He trained at Harvard, the Courtauld Institute, and Yale, and has held residential fellowships at the Fondazione Roberto Longhi in Florence, Italy, and the University of Heidelberg.
Curatorial Experience
Platts is active as a curator, having conceived and co-organized exhibitions on medieval, Renaissance, and modern art at the Getty Museum (“Renaissance Splendors from the Northern Italian Courts," summer 2015); Yale University Libraries (“Representing the Law in the Most Serene Republic: Images of Authority from Renaissance Venice,” winter 2016-17); University of Connecticut (“The Fabulous Lives of Morton, Nellie, and Maisie Plant: Art and Leisure in Gilded-Age Groton,” spring 2019); Vassar's Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center ("The Great Wonder: Violet Oakley and the Gothic Revival at Vassar," spring 2021); and the University of Cincinnati ("Rediscovering Catharina van Hemessen's Scourging of Christ: Women Artists, Patrons, and Rulers in Renaissance Europe").
Technical Study of Art
With colleagues in Chemistry, Geology, and Museum Studies, Platts uses scientific instruments to examine art in local and regional museums and collections. This research group, which he co-coordinates, has used X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and Raman spectroscopy, among other approaches, to study works attributed or related to Bernardo Daddi, Pietro Lorenzetti, Raphael, Catharina van Hemessen, Palma Giovane, and Anthony Van Dyck. Currently, the group is studying a little-known, signed work by Catharina van Hemessen, one of the most significant female artists of the Renaissance.
Community Outreach
Platts has developed an educational outreach program in which he and University of Cincinnati (UC) students create and deliver object-centered presentations on medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art to local classrooms at Cincinnati public high schools and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI). He and the UC students bring manuscript illuminations, prints, and illustrated books (as well as replicas of artists' tools and materials) to the classrooms so that students can examine and physically handle centuries-old artworks.
Art Documentation & Discoveries
Another ongoing project is an informal census of pre-1700 European paintings, drawings, and illuminated manuscripts in lesser-known or smaller institutions (museums, libraries, universities) in the Midwest and other regions of the US. Chris has discovered important artworks by Paolo Veneziano, Attavante, and other artists.
Research
Platts studies medieval and Renaissance European art, focusing on Italian painting and manuscript illumination, ca. 1250-1550. He is currently completing a book on Paolo Veneziano and Venetian Gothic painting as well as studies on Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Andrea Mantegna, and Attavante. Chris is interested in the style, iconography, design, and function of artworks in relation to their patrons and diverse audiences. He trained at Harvard, the Courtauld Institute, and Yale, and has held residential fellowships at the Fondazione Roberto Longhi in Florence, Italy, and the University of Heidelberg.
Curatorial Experience
Platts is active as a curator, having conceived and co-organized exhibitions on medieval, Renaissance, and modern art at the Getty Museum (“Renaissance Splendors from the Northern Italian Courts," summer 2015); Yale University Libraries (“Representing the Law in the Most Serene Republic: Images of Authority from Renaissance Venice,” winter 2016-17); University of Connecticut (“The Fabulous Lives of Morton, Nellie, and Maisie Plant: Art and Leisure in Gilded-Age Groton,” spring 2019); Vassar's Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center ("The Great Wonder: Violet Oakley and the Gothic Revival at Vassar," spring 2021); and the University of Cincinnati ("Rediscovering Catharina van Hemessen's Scourging of Christ: Women Artists, Patrons, and Rulers in Renaissance Europe").
Technical Study of Art
With colleagues in Chemistry, Geology, and Museum Studies, Platts uses scientific instruments to examine art in local and regional museums and collections. This research group, which he co-coordinates, has used X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and Raman spectroscopy, among other approaches, to study works attributed or related to Bernardo Daddi, Pietro Lorenzetti, Raphael, Catharina van Hemessen, Palma Giovane, and Anthony Van Dyck. Currently, the group is studying a little-known, signed work by Catharina van Hemessen, one of the most significant female artists of the Renaissance.
Community Outreach
Platts has developed an educational outreach program in which he and University of Cincinnati (UC) students create and deliver object-centered presentations on medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art to local classrooms at Cincinnati public high schools and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI). He and the UC students bring manuscript illuminations, prints, and illustrated books (as well as replicas of artists' tools and materials) to the classrooms so that students can examine and physically handle centuries-old artworks.
Art Documentation & Discoveries
Another ongoing project is an informal census of pre-1700 European paintings, drawings, and illuminated manuscripts in lesser-known or smaller institutions (museums, libraries, universities) in the Midwest and other regions of the US. Chris has discovered important artworks by Paolo Veneziano, Attavante, and other artists.
Calloway Brewster Scott
Assistant Professor, History
Blegen Library
Calloway Scott (PhD, NYU 2017) is a historian of ancient Greece. His research is informed by an interest in the entanglements of science and society. Inspired by turns in medical history and medical anthropology, his current book-project examines the ways health and disease were conceived of and experienced as biological, social, and political phenomena in antiquity. It makes the case that “health” furnished a key conceptual tool for performing interpersonal relations and civic cohesion alike, taking as evidence technical treatises, material culture, and the rich remains of Classical Greek healing cults. Among other things, he is interested in the historical uses (and abuses) of the Hippocratic Corpus; cultural perceptions of heredity; and divination, epistemology, and institutionalism in the Mediterranean. He has published in leading journals and is a regular contributor to Synapsis, a public-facing project in support of the medical humanities. He has taught courses on ancient religion and magic, Graeco-Roman medicine, and dreams in the ancient and modern world. Full CV at https://uc.academia.edu/CallowayScott
Krista Sigler
Associate Professor, History
275A BA MUNTZ
Chair of the Department of History, Philosophy, and Political Science. Research interests include the cultural history of late imperial and early Soviet Russia, as well as scholarship of teaching and learning.
Joseph Takougang
Professor, Department Head, History
3428C French Hall
Dr. Joseph Takougang is Professor of African history and Department Head in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Cincinnati. He is also an affiliate faculty in the Department of History. Dr.Takougang obtained a BA in history from the University of Yaounde, Cameroon, and an MA and PhD in African history from the University of Illinois, Chicago. He researches and writes on colonial and post-colonial Africa, with a focus on Cameroon. A secondary interest focuses on contemporary African migration, particularly to the United States.
Peter Van Minnen
Professor, History
311A Blegen Library
Peter van Minnen (PhD 1997) is an ancient historian broadly interested in the society, economy, and culture of the Roman Empire, including Early Christianity and Late Antiquity. He is an authority on papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt and made world news in 2000-01 with the discovery of the so-called Cleopatra papyrus. He has taught in Classics and History departments around the world, as well as in Divinity and Law schools. He has held fellowships from Leuven University, the Dutch Academy, Dumbarton Oaks, the American School in Athens, and the Loeb Foundation.
He has taught seminars on Alexandria (Greek papyri), Keos (Greek inscriptions), Latium Vetus (Latin inscriptions), and Roman North Africa, as well as more topical seminars (e.g., religion in the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial worlds). He has set specials ranging from the Persian Empire and the economy of Classical Athens to Roman law and Greek and Latin patristics. His students have worked on Late Antique poetry, religion, and urban history, and on the transition from the Republic (or Hellenistic period) to the early Roman Empire from a variety of perspectives (literature, institutions, iconography, coins). Almost all PhDs hold tenure-track academic positions in the US or abroad.
He is currently engaged in two projects: the edition of a family archive from Hermopolis (with Greek athletes in the family) and a study of documents from Alexandria (complementing archaeology and literature; with a web component, https://classics.uc.edu/users/vanminnen/ancient_alexandria/). His publications now number well over 200 and include studies of the archaeological context of literature and documents, the Roman economy, and women in Greco-Roman Egypt. He loves numbers and looks forward to sharing his passion for agriculture, demography, and taxation… Since 2006 he edits the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists, which involves one or two graduate assistants.
For more information, see his academia.edu page (https://uc.academia.edu/PetervanMinnen), and for a CV see https://classics.uc.edu/cv/PVM-CV2023-WEB.pdf.
He has taught seminars on Alexandria (Greek papyri), Keos (Greek inscriptions), Latium Vetus (Latin inscriptions), and Roman North Africa, as well as more topical seminars (e.g., religion in the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial worlds). He has set specials ranging from the Persian Empire and the economy of Classical Athens to Roman law and Greek and Latin patristics. His students have worked on Late Antique poetry, religion, and urban history, and on the transition from the Republic (or Hellenistic period) to the early Roman Empire from a variety of perspectives (literature, institutions, iconography, coins). Almost all PhDs hold tenure-track academic positions in the US or abroad.
He is currently engaged in two projects: the edition of a family archive from Hermopolis (with Greek athletes in the family) and a study of documents from Alexandria (complementing archaeology and literature; with a web component, https://classics.uc.edu/users/vanminnen/ancient_alexandria/). His publications now number well over 200 and include studies of the archaeological context of literature and documents, the Roman economy, and women in Greco-Roman Egypt. He loves numbers and looks forward to sharing his passion for agriculture, demography, and taxation… Since 2006 he edits the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists, which involves one or two graduate assistants.
For more information, see his academia.edu page (https://uc.academia.edu/PetervanMinnen), and for a CV see https://classics.uc.edu/cv/PVM-CV2023-WEB.pdf.
Matthew Herbert Williamson
Assoc Dir Academic, History
480 Langsam Library
Emeriti Faculty
John Kurt Alexander
Professor Emeritus, History
John Kurt Alexander
Professor Emeritus, History
5138617462
alexanjk@ucmail.uc.edu
John K. Alexander, who grew up in Portland, Oregon, joined the University of Cincinnati faculty in 1969 and became Professor Emeritus on August 15, 2012. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. While his primary research interests are in the era of the American Revolution, he has special interest in the history of the media, of poverty and of crowd violence in American history generally.
Professor Alexander has been recognized for his teaching and concern for students. In 1975 he received the University of Cincinnati’s A. B. “Dolly” Cohen Award for Excellence in University Teaching and was elected to Omicron Delta Kappa; in 1989 he was given the Faculty Emphasis On Diversity Award of the University of Cincinnati’s Racial Awareness Pilot Project; in 2002 the Ohio Academy of History presented him its Outstanding Teacher Award; the University of Cincinnati honored Professor Alexander by bestowing its Distinguished Teaching Professor Award on him in 2003; in 2009 the African American Cultural & Research Center in conjunction with the African American Alumni Association gave him its Award of Appreciation for his “dedication and commitment to the students of the University of Cincinnati.” Professor Alexander’s other awards include being selected as the first George Washington Distinguished Scholar of The Tri-State Association of The Society of The Cincinnati (1999) and his inclusion in Who's Who in American Education and inWho’s Who in America.
He is the author of the following books:
Samuel Adams: The Life of an American Revolutionary (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011). This work, which was an “Editor’s Pick” in the July 2011 History Book Club offerings, was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2011.
Samuel Adams: America’s Revolutionary Politician (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002 and paperback edition issued 2004).
The Selling of the Constitutional Convention of 1787: A History of News Coverage (Madison: Madison House for The Center for the Study of the American Constitution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1990)
Render Them Submissive: Responses to Poverty in Philadelphia, 1760-1800 (Amherst, MA:The University of Massachusetts Press, 1980)
Alexander has published articles in The William and Mary Quarterly, Early American Studies, The New England Quarterly, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Pennsylvania History, Essex Institute Historical Collections, and Vermont History. He produced the annotated entry on the United States Constitution for “Special Report on the Constitution’s Bicentennial,” The Los Angeles Times, September 13, 1987 (Special Report, pp. 4-8) as well as “‘High Crimes’: A Yardstick Made by History,”The Los Angeles Times, December 19, 1998 (National Edition, A15, co-authored with Richard T. Cooper).
Professor Emeritus, History
5138617462
alexanjk@ucmail.uc.edu
John K. Alexander, who grew up in Portland, Oregon, joined the University of Cincinnati faculty in 1969 and became Professor Emeritus on August 15, 2012. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. While his primary research interests are in the era of the American Revolution, he has special interest in the history of the media, of poverty and of crowd violence in American history generally.
Professor Alexander has been recognized for his teaching and concern for students. In 1975 he received the University of Cincinnati’s A. B. “Dolly” Cohen Award for Excellence in University Teaching and was elected to Omicron Delta Kappa; in 1989 he was given the Faculty Emphasis On Diversity Award of the University of Cincinnati’s Racial Awareness Pilot Project; in 2002 the Ohio Academy of History presented him its Outstanding Teacher Award; the University of Cincinnati honored Professor Alexander by bestowing its Distinguished Teaching Professor Award on him in 2003; in 2009 the African American Cultural & Research Center in conjunction with the African American Alumni Association gave him its Award of Appreciation for his “dedication and commitment to the students of the University of Cincinnati.” Professor Alexander’s other awards include being selected as the first George Washington Distinguished Scholar of The Tri-State Association of The Society of The Cincinnati (1999) and his inclusion in Who's Who in American Education and inWho’s Who in America.
He is the author of the following books:
Samuel Adams: The Life of an American Revolutionary (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011). This work, which was an “Editor’s Pick” in the July 2011 History Book Club offerings, was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2011.
Samuel Adams: America’s Revolutionary Politician (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002 and paperback edition issued 2004).
The Selling of the Constitutional Convention of 1787: A History of News Coverage (Madison: Madison House for The Center for the Study of the American Constitution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1990)
Render Them Submissive: Responses to Poverty in Philadelphia, 1760-1800 (Amherst, MA:The University of Massachusetts Press, 1980)
Alexander has published articles in The William and Mary Quarterly, Early American Studies, The New England Quarterly, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Pennsylvania History, Essex Institute Historical Collections, and Vermont History. He produced the annotated entry on the United States Constitution for “Special Report on the Constitution’s Bicentennial,” The Los Angeles Times, September 13, 1987 (Special Report, pp. 4-8) as well as “‘High Crimes’: A Yardstick Made by History,”The Los Angeles Times, December 19, 1998 (National Edition, A15, co-authored with Richard T. Cooper).
John K. Brackett
Professor Emeritus, History
Associate Professor Brackett received his BA and PhD in History from the University of California at Berkeley. He has taught at the University of Cincinnati since 1987. Primary interests include social history of the Italian Renaissance, especially in Florence; history of crime and criminal justice; black Africans in Renaissance and early modern Europe.
Charles Frederick Casey-Leininger
Educator Associate Professor Emeritus, History
I am a long time resident of the City of Cincinnati, a factor reflected in my teaching and research interests. I received my Ph.D. at UC while studying race, housing, poverty, and urban renewal in Cincinnati after World War II. I use that material in several of my courses. I have worked as an independent public historian working on Cincinnati topics for local organizations including writing a 100th anniversary History of the Legal Aid Society of Cincinnati and a brief history of race and housing in Cincinnati in the 20th century. I have used demographic data and geographic information systems extensively in my research. I especially enjoy working directly with students on their research projects, but also find lecture courses challenging and fun including the American History Survey.
Recently, I was appointed Director of Public History with the charge to expand course offerings to our students and to build stronger connections between our faculty and students and the wider community interested in history. One of the most important parts of this is helping history majors and minors and graduate students find internships at area museums, libraries, and other institutions. It’s great to see students have such valuable hands on experience doing what professional historians do.
Recently, I was appointed Director of Public History with the charge to expand course offerings to our students and to build stronger connections between our faculty and students and the wider community interested in history. One of the most important parts of this is helping history majors and minors and graduate students find internships at area museums, libraries, and other institutions. It’s great to see students have such valuable hands on experience doing what professional historians do.
Mark A. Lause
Professor Emeritus, History
Professor Lause grew up in a small blue collar community and worked his way through college during the 1960s and 70s. His academic interests seemed to center naturally on the history of class and social movements in the United States.
Lause has done extensive work in nineteenth century labor and social history, including numerous articles in academic journals and reference material. His initial work focused on early printers to discuss the origins of an American labor movement: “Some Degree of Power”: From Hired Hand to Union Craftsman in the Preindustrial American Printing Trades, 1778-1815. (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1991) documented the first generation of unionists in that craft.
Lause’s subsequent work has sought new ways of examining and understanding the sectional crisis and the Civil War "from the bottom up." He argued for the complexity of the Republican and Unionist coalition—before and after—in Young America: Land, Labor, and the Republican Community (Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press, 2005) on the antebellum land reform movement and The Civil War's Last Campaign: James B. Weaver, the Greenback-Labor Party & the Politics of Race & Section (Lanpham, Md.: University Press of America, 2001). His Race & Radicalism in the Union Army (Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009) explores the wartime collaboration of blacks, Indians and whites in the Transmississippi under the leadership of those abolitionists, land reformers, socialists and others who had been associated with John Brown before the Civil War. The Antebellum Political Crisis & the First American Bohemians (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2009) discusses the cultural impact of escalating sectional and electoral pressures on antebellum radicalism. His Price's Lost Campaign: the 1864 Invasion of Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011) uses social and institutional history to cast light on the neglected Civil War expedition that largely closed the conflict west of the Mississippi River. A Secret Society History of the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011) examines the importance of several clandestine, fraternal traditions as a means of understanding how ordinary citizens, including African Americans, struggled to shape their history. The reorganization of the U of Missouri Press delayed the appearance of his book on the last part of the 1864 Missouri campaign, The Collapse of Price's Raid: the Beginning of the End in Civil War Missouri, but it should appear in the summer of 2015. This will coincide with his Free Labor: the Civil War & the Making of the American Working Class, the completion of a research project begun years earlier. His book on spiritualism and the politis of the Civil War era is also due to appear. Lause is also finishing a manuscript about the cowboy strikes of the 1880s.
In addition, Lause expects soon to submit The Last Republicans, a treatment of Giueseppe Garibaldi's republican internantional brigades in the Franco-Prussian War as the final gasp of an old ideal of republicanism. He has also started a project on the related cantonal revolts of 1873-1874 in Spain. All of this is aiming at a general understanding of Reconstruction in the U.S. from a global perspective.
Lause has done extensive work in nineteenth century labor and social history, including numerous articles in academic journals and reference material. His initial work focused on early printers to discuss the origins of an American labor movement: “Some Degree of Power”: From Hired Hand to Union Craftsman in the Preindustrial American Printing Trades, 1778-1815. (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1991) documented the first generation of unionists in that craft.
Lause’s subsequent work has sought new ways of examining and understanding the sectional crisis and the Civil War "from the bottom up." He argued for the complexity of the Republican and Unionist coalition—before and after—in Young America: Land, Labor, and the Republican Community (Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press, 2005) on the antebellum land reform movement and The Civil War's Last Campaign: James B. Weaver, the Greenback-Labor Party & the Politics of Race & Section (Lanpham, Md.: University Press of America, 2001). His Race & Radicalism in the Union Army (Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009) explores the wartime collaboration of blacks, Indians and whites in the Transmississippi under the leadership of those abolitionists, land reformers, socialists and others who had been associated with John Brown before the Civil War. The Antebellum Political Crisis & the First American Bohemians (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2009) discusses the cultural impact of escalating sectional and electoral pressures on antebellum radicalism. His Price's Lost Campaign: the 1864 Invasion of Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011) uses social and institutional history to cast light on the neglected Civil War expedition that largely closed the conflict west of the Mississippi River. A Secret Society History of the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011) examines the importance of several clandestine, fraternal traditions as a means of understanding how ordinary citizens, including African Americans, struggled to shape their history. The reorganization of the U of Missouri Press delayed the appearance of his book on the last part of the 1864 Missouri campaign, The Collapse of Price's Raid: the Beginning of the End in Civil War Missouri, but it should appear in the summer of 2015. This will coincide with his Free Labor: the Civil War & the Making of the American Working Class, the completion of a research project begun years earlier. His book on spiritualism and the politis of the Civil War era is also due to appear. Lause is also finishing a manuscript about the cowboy strikes of the 1880s.
In addition, Lause expects soon to submit The Last Republicans, a treatment of Giueseppe Garibaldi's republican internantional brigades in the Franco-Prussian War as the final gasp of an old ideal of republicanism. He has also started a project on the related cantonal revolts of 1873-1874 in Spain. All of this is aiming at a general understanding of Reconstruction in the U.S. from a global perspective.
Barbara Ramusack
Charles Phelps Taft Professor; Professor Emerita, History
Professor Ramusack received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan in 1969 and has been teaching at the University of Cincinnati since 1967. While she teaches courses on South Asia from Mohenjo Daro to the present, her primary research interests are in the princely states, women’s issues and maternal and child health during the colonial period. She has worked extensively in archives throughout India and in the United Kingdom where her research has been supported by fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Fulbright programs, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Smithsonian Institution. She has also served two terms as Director of Graduate Studies and one term as Head in the UC Department of History and as Chair of the Taft Faculty Executive Board.
Staff
Cam Kruse
Program Director, History
5241A CLIFTCT
Cam Kruse is the Program Manager for the departments of Romance and Arabic Languages and Literatures (RALL) and Asian, East European, and German Studies (AEGS). He completed his undergraduate career at the University of Louisville in 2017, completing a BSBA in Business Marketing, with minors in French and Entrepreneurship. He obtained his MA in French Studies with a focus on Foreign Language Teaching at the University of Cincinnati in 2022.