All News
October 28, 2024
October 22, 2024
October 8, 2024
October 3, 2024
UC Berkeley History Professor Emeritus David Hollinger is one of a small handful of people on the UC Berkeley campus today who participated in the Free Speech Movement (FSM) of 1964. In a recent conversation, Hollinger reflected on his experience in the FSM and its connection to his career as a scholar and teacher.
Dylan Penningroth is a finalist for the 2024 Cundill History Prize!
September 23, 2024
September 9, 2024
May 31, 2024
May 20, 2024
May 8, 2024
Christopher Ying, the 2024 recipient of the University Medal, UC Berkeley's top award for graduating seniors. Ying is a double major in history and mathematics.
May 1, 2024
Congratulations to Hidetaka Hirota on his election as vice president/president elect of the IEHS!
April 15, 2024
UC Berkeley History Professor John Connelly has been awarded a prestigious 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship.
April 12, 2024
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.
March 29, 2024
February 20, 2024
February 19, 2024
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.
December 26, 2023
December 17, 2023
November 13, 2023
November 6, 2023
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.
November 2, 2023
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:
October 25, 2023
October 23, 2023
September 25, 2023
September 10, 2023
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.
August 15, 2023
July 28, 2023
June 21, 2023
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.
June 13, 2023
We are delighted to announce that Hannah Zeavin is officially joining us as Assistant Professor in the fall, jointly appointed with the Berkeley Center for New Media. We're thrilled to have her among us.
June 9, 2023
“Offering support in this early stage can mean the difference between thriving and floundering in the academy.”
May 24, 2023
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.
May 11, 2023
May 9, 2023
May 1, 2023
April 25, 2023
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.
April 20, 2023
A recent AHA's Perspectives on History article features our very own History PhD Pipeline Program. Read it here!
April 14, 2023
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!
February 28, 2023
Stephanie Jones-Rogers is one of nine scholars to receive the 2023 Dan David Prize, the largest history prize in the world.
February 17, 2023
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.
December 16, 2022
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.
December 1, 2022
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.
November 1, 2022
Richard Herr (Photo courtesy of Rikki Ward)
October 26, 2022
October 24, 2022
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.
October 4, 2022
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.
September 27, 2022
August 16, 2022
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.
July 13, 2022
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."
June 30, 2022
For AHA Perspectives, PhD candidate Noah Ramage writes about the history of tribal nations and democracy, tracing parallels between past and present tensions between democracy and imperialism.
Bonnie Morris has a featured article on AHA Perspectives, marking the 50 year anniversary of Title XI.
June 2, 2022
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,
April 28, 2022
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
March 31, 2022
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:
February 23, 2022
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
February 3, 2022
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.
January 20, 2022
December 13, 2021
Additional reading:
"Mourning the loss of Dr. Tyler Stovall," the Othering and Belonging Institute
"In Memoriam," Perspectives on History - AHA
November 23, 2021
Ph.D. Candidate Anthony Morreale has a new essay published in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
November 1, 2021
Bathsheba Demuth (Ph.D. '17) has been awarded the John H. Dunning Prize by the AHA for her book Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait (W.W. Norton, 2019).
Alumnus Bobby Lee (Ph.D.
September 27, 2021
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.
September 20, 2021
Christine Philliou's newest title, Turkey: A Past Against History, has a featured review in the journal Foreign Affairs. Click here to learn more.
September 1, 2021
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:
August 12, 2021
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
August 2, 2021
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.
July 19, 2021
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.
May 19, 2021
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
May 12, 2021
Christine M. Philliou was interviewed for New Books Network, to discuss her newest title Turkey: A Past Against History (University of California Press, 2021)
May 3, 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.
April 8, 2021
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.
April 7, 2021
March 30, 2021
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:
March 17, 2021
"Robert Middlekauff, Historian of Washington and His War, Dies at 91," The New York Times (September 9, 2021)
March 15, 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.
March 1, 2021
February 23, 2021
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.
October 21, 2020
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.
October 1, 2020
Bernadette Pérez joined the History Department this Fall, as the newest addition to our faculty. Pérez is a historian of race and environment in the United States, specializing in the histories of Latinx and Indigenous peoples. She earned her Ph.D. in U.S. History from the University of Minnesota. She holds an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Colorado, Boulder (her hometown).
Congratulations to Associate Professor Stephanie Jones-Rogers, who has been awarded a number of prizes for her ground-breaking publication, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (Yale University Press, 2019).
July 7, 2020
June 18, 2020
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.
June 10, 2020
May 7, 2020
Congratulations to Ph.D. candidate Gloria Yu, who has been awarded a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship!
April 17, 2020
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!
February 19, 2020
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.
February 10, 2020
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.
February 5, 2020
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.
January 16, 2020
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.
January 15, 2020
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.
November 27, 2019
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.
November 25, 2019
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
October 7, 2019
On November 20th, Professor Brian DeLay will be a featured speaker for a Morton L. Mandel Public Lecture organized by the Berkeley Program Committee of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, titled “Arms Trafficking: Its Past, Present and Future”.
September 23, 2019
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.
September 19, 2019
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:
September 10, 2019
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.
August 19, 2019
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".
August 2, 2019
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.
June 24, 2019
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?"
May 24, 2019
May 23, 2019
April 17, 2019
April 15, 2019
March 27, 2019
The Department of History recently launched the History Diversity Project, its first-ever crowdfunding initiative. The project, envisioned as an ongoing multi-year effort, will support and explore different kinds of diversity in historical scholarship. Donor gifts made to the project will fund a speaker series, as well as student research and travel funding. For 2019-20, the project will focus on Women and Gender in History.
March 17, 2019
March 5, 2019
November 17, 2018
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.
November 15, 2018
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.
October 10, 2018
September 18, 2018
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.
June 22, 2018
May 25, 2018
April 30, 2018
April 10, 2018
March 20, 2018
March 1, 2018
January 16, 2018
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.
September 6, 2017
July 27, 2017
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.