News

The U.S. Supreme Court this week reaffirmed the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, rejecting President Donald Trump’s attempt to end the longstanding practice of granting citizenship to nearly all children born on U.S. soil. 

As the justices considered the history of birthright citizenship in the United States, they turned to the work of UC Berkeley History Professor Hidetaka Hirota, whose 2017 book “Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy” was cited in the decision.

Photo courtesy of The Institute for South Asia Studies.

Dear friends,

History and ethnic studies senior Elizabeth Diaz has built her academic career around a central question: What does activism look like beyond protest?

That question became the foundation for her senior thesis, “Activism Beyond Protest in the Central Valley,” which examines how activism takes different forms among communities and often appears in everyday acts of advocacy, mutual support and organizing. 

As editor in chief of The Daily Californian, Ananya Rupanagunta spent her final year at UC Berkeley facing a challenge many newsrooms across the country are dealing with: how to keep journalism alive during a time of financial uncertainty, political tension and growing distrust in the media.

UC Berkeley is renowned for its academic rigor across departments and disciplines. For professors Elora Shehabuddin and Ussama Makdisi, it is also what made them decide to make Berkeley their home. 

Hannah Zeavin named a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow!

Five UC Berkeley faculty have been selected as recipients of the 2026 Distinguished Teaching Award, the campus’s most prestigious honor for teaching. 

The OAH is pleased to announce the results of the 2026 election. The individuals listed will take their seats on the Executive Board after the 2026 OAH Conference on American History in Philadelphia, April 16-19. 

Berkeley Professor Hannah Zeavin explores how 20th-century ideals of motherhood and new media technologies became deeply intertwined, shaping and surveilling American family life.

When religion was put under stress in early modern Europe, the consequences were often dramatic and far-reaching. UC Berkeley History Professor Ethan Shagan studies this contested space, examining how material conditions, alongside theological and ideological factors, led to religious change during that period.

Janaki Bakhle: Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva 

Andrew Hardy, a Ph.D. candidate in the campus history department, led a walking tour titled “Beyond the Golden Gate: Asia Pacific and the Berkeley Campus” on Sunday.

At first, studying meat consumption in Germany may seem like a niche topic. But for UC Berkeley History Professor John Efron, meat offers a revealing lens into Jewish-German relations throughout centuries. 

AI-driven translation software offers a tantalizing opportunity to unlock doors to the Jewish past. Alone, however, it’s not enough.

Celebrating the profoundly influential historian Martin Jay and his contribution to graduate education, this new award recognizes the best graduate student-authored article accepted for publication in the Journal of the History of Ideas each year.

Janaki Bakhle's "Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva" is nominated for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography! Learn more here.

UC Berkeley History and American Studies Professor Mark Brilliant's research examines the historical context of California's most pressing public policy concerns, including housing, affirmative action and income inequality, tracing them as far back as World War II and the Civil Rights Movement.

Dear friends,

It is with deep sadness that I share the news that our distinguished colleague Thomas A. Brady, Peder Sather Professor Emeritus of History, passed away at home on Friday evening, March 7, 2025, at the age of 87.

The historian and author of the popular newsletter Letters from an American joins in a conversation with UC Berkeley Professor Dylan Penningroth.

BARTH FAMILY GIFT SUPPORTS WESTERN HISTORY AT BERKELEY

"In this interview, Massimo Mazzotti discusses the inspirations behind Reactionary Mathematics: A Genealogy of Purity, a thought-provoking exploration of the relationship between mathematics and politics," write Berkeley Letters & Science.

The Department of History's Hannah Zeavin named one of the 2024 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant winners.

Stephanie Jones-Roger's Research Highlighted in new New York Times Article "Scholars Thought White Women Were Passive Enslavers. They Were Wrong."

UC Berkeley History Professor John Connelly has been awarded a prestigious 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Soon to be graduating senior, Ariana Kretz '24, got her piece "The Making of Female Martyrs in the Age of Revolutions" published in Issue VIII of the Vanderbilt Historical Review. 

Erased: An Exploration of Queer Japanese Americans’ Experience During the Internment Period by Ryan Gottschalk ’25 wins Library Prize. Read more about Gottschalk's work here.

Dear friends,

It is with deep sadness that I share news of the death of John L. Heilbron, Professor Emeritus of History of Science and former Vice Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. John passed away in Padua, Italy, on Sunday morning, November 5, 2023, at the age of 89.

We are excited to welcome Jason Muniz as the new Director of the UC Berkeley History Social Science Project. See below for Jason Muniz's description of the work HSSP does:

An article by Professor David Henkin was published in the Atlantic this month. The article, "Three Cheers for Partisanship," discusses the ways in which politics can be viewed as a team sport. Read the full article here.

We are thrilled to share the news that Trevor Jackson is officially joining us as Assistant Professor in the fall, jointly appointed with the Program in Political Economy. It's a huge pleasure to have him back (as many of you know, he is one of our own PhDs). He will be teaching classes that serve both History and Political Economy and will be physically located with us in Dwinelle.

“Offering support in this early stage can mean the difference between thriving and floundering in the academy.”

Drawing from her book How the Clinic Made Gender Professor Sandra Eder reflects on the history of gender, its origins in the medical sector, and its fraught present in this article for the Los Angeles Review of Books. Read the full article here.

History Professor Ussama Makdisi's course, History 100 M Special Topics: Palestine and the Palestinians: A Modern History, explores the history of contemporary Palestine with a focus on the experiences and voices of Palestinian people. Read the full article here.

A recent AHA's Perspectives on History article features our very own History PhD Pipeline Program. Read it here!

The Division of Social Sciences is honoring our own Marianne Bartholomew-Couts and James Vernon with the Distinguished Service and Teaching Awards. This is much-deserved recognition of two colleagues whose dedication and skill have made the History Department and the Division a better place. We celebrate with them. Both Marianne and James will be honored during the Social Science Fest on Tuesday, April 25. Congratulations!

Stephanie Jones-Rogers is one of nine scholars to receive the 2023 Dan David Prize, the largest history prize in the world.

2/17/2023

Dear friends,

It is with great sadness that I convey news of the death of Eugene F. Irschick, a distinguished historian of South Asia and a member of the Berkeley History Department since 1964. Born in 1934, Gene passed away on November 10, 2022, in El Dorado Hills, California, at the age of 88.

The History Department Chair’s Advisory Committee strongly supports our graduate students during the UAW’s ongoing contract negotiations with the University of California. As we near the end of the fall semester, we also want to make clear that we support department faculty who have been teaching fall courses with Academic Student Employees and who are declining to pick up graduate students’ struck labor, including faculty who for the duration of the strike choose to submit final grades this fall for only those students identified by the campus as vulnerable.

If you have yet to meet Professor Philipp Lenhard and Professor Nel de Mûelenaere, two visiting professors in History, this article by the Californian offers a  highlight into their experiences at UC Berkeley. Professor Lenhard visits us from the University of Munich in Germany, through the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst scholarship. Nel de Mûelanaere joins us by way of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, as the Rubens Chair for the History and Culture of the Low Countries. 

Richard Herr (Photo courtesy of Rikki Ward) 

Congratulations to Ph.D. student Tara Madhav, winner of the AHA Raymond J. Cunningham Prize for the best article published in a journal written by an undergraduate student.

Professor Christine Philliou helped secure a $1 million endowment from the Modern Greek Studies Foundation in San Francisco, to establish the Nikos Kazantzakis Visiting Scholar Program at the UC Berkeley Modern Greek and Hellenic Studies Program. The program will officially launch in 2023 to support visiting scholars in the field of Modern Greek Studies with a particular focus on Modern Greek language, literature, film, history and culture. 

In a new op-ed published in the Washington Post, Associate Professor Hidetaka Hirota examines the practice of bussing migrants across state lines, a strategy currently employed by governors in the Southwest, and its historical precedent in mid-19th century Massachusetts. 

Congratulations to PhD Candidate Cameron Black for being named a Dissertation Fellow with the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE). The Fellowship will support Black wtih the completion of his dissertation, "Student-Athletes or University Employees: Student-Athlete Protest, Disciplinary Policies as Labor Management, 1968-1973."

Update on August 1, 2022: 

The History Department invites you to consider a donation to the Richard and Valerie Herr Graduate Student Support Fund, in celebration of Professor Emeritus Richard Herr while supporting graduate students studying Spain and the Mediterranean region.

Dear friends,

This May, Professor Carlos Noreña will deliver the prestigious J.H. Gray Lectures at Cambridge University. Read below to register. 

In 2022, the J. H. Gray Lectures will be delivered by Prof. Carlos Norena (UC Berkeley). The Lectures will be livestreamed. Further details will be circulated nearer the time.

17th May

Lecture: Geographies of Power (5pm G.19)

18th May

For the second year in a row, the History Department has been named the top History Program in the nation in U.S. News & World Report's graduate program rankings!

Within history field specialties, the UC Berkeley History Department also ranked:

Professor David Henkin is featured on Berkeley Voices, "a Berkeley News podcast about the people and research that makes UC Berkeley the world-changing place that it is." Listen to "How the seven-day week made us who we are."

Nov 11, 2021

Professor Ethan Katz was featured on PBS NewsHour, to share his views about recent remarks on The View about the Holocaust, and what these remarks might teach us about the state of antisemitism today. In the PBS segment, Katz notes, "I think we are in a moment of diminished public consciousness about the Holocaust.

Additional reading:

"Mourning the loss of Dr. Tyler Stovall," the Othering and Belonging Institute

"In Memoriam," Perspectives on History - AHA

Ph.D. Candidate Anthony Morreale has a new essay published in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

9/24/21

Dear friends,

I am saddened to share the news that Charles G. Sellers, a long-time member of our Department, passed away September 23, at the age of ninety-eight.

Christine Philliou's newest title, Turkey: A Past Against History, has a featured review in the journal Foreign Affairs. Click here to learn more. 

Congratulations to Ph.D. candidate Joseph Ledford, who has been named an America in the World Consortium fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. The fellowship will support Ledford's dissertation completion at the Clements Center. 

From the press release: 

Updated: August 12th, 2021

We'd like to highlight the following extensive articles honoring the life of Leon Litwack: 

A Tribute to Leon Litwack by James Grossman and Waldo E. Martin, Perspectives on History

In Memoriam: Leon Litwack by Waldo E. Martin, Department of History Newsletter

Congratulations to Professor Susanna Elm, who was among 84 new Fellows elected by the British Academy, in recognition of her scholarly distinction in the social sciences. Elm is the Sidney H. Ehrman Professor of European History, and is one of only two scholars selected in her field this year.

Congratulations to Associate Professor Ronit Stahl, who has been named a Greenwall Faculty Scholar. The Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics is a career development award to enable junior faculty members to carry out innovative bioethics research.

A new virtual exhibit is live at the Hearst Museum of Anthropology, designed by the students of Dilliana Angelova’s seminar, "Well Behaved Women." Viewers can explore 16 featured objects and student perspectives in the virtual exhibit titled “Rediscovering Ancient Women: Fragments of Their Lives from the Mediterranean Collections at the Hearst Museum of Anthropo

Christine M. Philliou was interviewed for New Books Network, to discuss her newest title Turkey: A Past Against History (University of California Press, 2021)

We are thrilled to announce that Professor Cathryn Carson has been appointed as the next chairman of the UC Berkeley History Department. Trained in Physics and the History of Science at the University of Chicago and Harvard University, Cathryn joined the Berkeley faculty in 1996 and she currently holds the Thomas M. Siebel Presidential Chair in the History of Science.

On Monday April 12, UC Berkeley will host “Race and responsibility: a conversation on Black-Jewish relations and the fight for equal justice.” The event is headed by Associate Professor of History Ethan Katz, and will feature Eric K.

Dear Cal History Community, 

The magazine U.S. News & World Report released its rankings of the Best Graduate Schools and Programs for 2022, and the History Department was ranked as the #1 History Program in the country!  While rankings don't fully capture the great accomplishments of our History community, we're happy to take a moment to celebrate this great recognition of our program. 

Our full rankings speak to the breadth and strength of our History Program: 

"Robert Middlekauff, Historian of Washington and His War, Dies at 91," The New York Times (September 9, 2021)

Congratulations to Associate Professor Ethan Katz, whose article “Jewish Citizens of an Imperial Nation-State: Toward a French-Algerian Frame for French Jewish History" has been awarded an Honorable Mention for the William Koren Jr.

Dr. Robin Mitchell

Congratulations to Fallon Burner (BA ’20), whose undergraduate History thesis "Healing Through Language: Revitalization and Renewal in the Wendat Confederacy" is now included in an online exhibit with the Craigleith Heritage Depot, a museum branch of the Blue Mountains Public Library in Ontario, Canada. The exhibit is called “Indigenous History and Culture” and features primary sources critical to Wendat history.

History alumnus Brandon M. Schechter (Ph.D. ’15) was awarded the Paul Birdsall Prize by the AHA for his book, The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects (Cornell, 2019), which was based on Brandon’s 2015 History dissertation.

Today, we highlight the historical texts produced by our own History faculty, who, in contributing to scholarship about African-American history, have expanded how scholars interrogate North American history as a whole. 

Congratulations to Ph.D. candidate Gloria Yu, who has been awarded a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship!

Today, the Los Angeles Times Book Awards announced that Associate Professor Stephanie Jones-Rogers has won the 2019 Book Prize in History, for They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South!

Congratulations to Associate Professor Stephanie Jones-Rogers, whose book They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (Yale University Press)was named an L.A.

Thank you to everyone who joined us on Wednesday, February 5th for this year’s History Homecoming! History Homecoming, the Department's annual event for alumni and friends, features a faculty panel on a historical theme followed by a catered reception.

This month, the Latin American Studies Association awarded Elena Schneider the Bryce Wood Book Award for her title The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade, and Slavery in the Atlantic World.

This month, Professor Michael Nylan’s translation of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War was released by W.W. Norton. Nylan is the first female scholar to translate this 2500-year-old classic text into any language.

Congratulations to Associate Professor Ethan Katz and fellow editors Lisa Moses Leff, and Maud S. Man­del, whose anthology Colonialism and the Jews (Indiana University Press, 2017) has been selected as a Finalist for the 2019 National Jewish Book Awards! The win­ners of the 2019 Nation­al Jew­ish Book Awards will be hon­ored on March 17, 2020 at an awards din­ner and cer­e­mo­ny in Man­hat­tan.

Associate Professor Daniel Sargent has been selected to join the 2020 UC Berkeley Faculty Leadership Academy! Each year, a limited number of tenured faculty are selected to participate in this leadership development program designed for faculty who are dedicated to enhancing their leadership abilities on the Berkeley campus.

Congratulations to Associate Professor Stephanie Jones-Rogers, whose book They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South was named as one of the “Ten Best History Boo

On September 16th, Associate Professor Brian DeLay spoke on a panel titled “The 2nd Amendment: American Society’s Interpretation Across Time", at the Free Speech Movement Café in Moffitt Library. The panel, which also included Franklin Zimring, Professor of law, Paul Pierson, Professor of political science , and moderator Hannah Shearer, Litigation Director at Giffords Law Center, debated current issues around the Second Amendement from legal, historical, and political science perspectives.

 The Southern Historical Association has announced Assistant Professor Caitlin Rosenthal as the 2019 winner of the Francis B. Simkins Award, for Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management (Harvard University Press, 2018). 

According to the SHA's press release:

Today, Associate Professor Elena Schneider was announced as the winner of the Murdo J. MacLeod Book Prize by the Latin American and Caribbean Section (LACS) of the Southern Historical Association. This prestigious prize was awarded for Schneider’s 2019 title, The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade, and Slavery in the Atlantic World. 

On August 30th, to mark the 400th anniversary of the beginning of slavery in North America, UC Berkeley will host an initiative throughout the 2019-2020 academic school year, called "400 Years of Resistance to Slavery and Injustice".

On August 2nd, Associate Professor Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers was interviewed for The Washington Post about her most recent publication, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South. In this interview, Jones-Rogers  details her research process, discusses the stereotypes about white women that her research directly challenges, and the public reaction to her findings. 

On June 20th, assistant professor Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers was featured on an episode of KQED's radio program Forum, titled "As House Takes Up Reparations Bill, How Should the U.S. Pay Its Debts to the Enslaved?"

Assistant Professor Ronit Stahl has been awarded the 2018 Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize for her book Enlisting Faith: How The Military Chaplaincy Shaped Religion and State in Modern America (Harvard University Press, 2017). The prize, awarded by the American Society of Church History, honors outstanding scholarship in church history by a first-time author and comes with a cash award of $2500.

Research Associate Alison Klairmont Lingo’s translation and edition, Louise Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France: Diverse Observations (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: Toronto: Iter Press, 2017) has been awarded the Josephine Roberts Award for the best scholarly edition published in 2017 in the field of early modern women and gender.

After serving in senior administrative roles within the College of Letters and Science (L&S) for a decade, Carla Hesse will return to her full-time faculty position after the completion of her terms next summer. A talented and versatile leader with a fervent belief in the power of a liberal arts education, Carla has served as executive dean of L&S since 2014 and as dean of its Division of Social Sciences since 2009.

In selecting The Work of the Dead, a book by UC Berkeley history professor Thomas W. Laqueur, to receive the 2018 Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies, the jury praised its examination of how and why the living have cared for the dead in western Europe since the 18th century as a monumental achievement.

In her recent post on the Berkeley Blog, Stephanie Jones-Rogers, assistant professor of history, explores the ways the U.S. legal system has historically sanctioned deadly force against African Americans, and how that history connects to the prevalence of police shootings of African Americans today.