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February 20, 2024

February 19, 2024

Berkeley Library

Ryan Gottschalk ’25

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

Photo of John Heilbron wearing a hat

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

Photo of Jason Muniz

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

Trevor Jackson

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

Heather Zeavin

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

Stephanie Jones-Rogers

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

May 24, 2023

Cover of How the Clinic Made Gender

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

Berkeley News

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

Eugene F. Irscchick

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

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

In this Matrix visual interview, PhD candidate Sophie Fitzmaurice shows the material world of the telegraph pole, from their production in pole yards to their use by woodpeckers. 

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. 

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, "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

In this episode of the Matrix podcast (produced by the UC Berkeley Social Science Matrix), Julia Sizek interviews Clare Ibarra, a PhD candidate in history, and Naomi Shoenfeld, a public health nurse practitioner and recent PhD from the joint UC San Francisco/UC Berkeley medical anthropology program. Both Ibarra and Shoenfeld study the history and present of socialist science and medicine in Cuba. 

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

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).

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

March 15, 2021

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

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

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

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

Berkeley News

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 SouthIn 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

Ph.D. candidate Craig Johnson has been named as a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow for 2019. The Newcombe Fellowship is the nation’s largest and most prestigious award for Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences addressing questions of ethical and religious values. Each Fellow will receive a 12-month award of $25,000 to support their final year of dissertation work.

May 23, 2019

Berkeley News
Preston Hotchkis Professor Emeritus David Hollinger has been named to the advisory board of a project to produce an ambitious oral history of former President Barack Obama’s life. The project, launched by the Obama Foundation and Columbia University, is one of the largest oral history projects ever conceived for a president and will serve as a primary-source record that can be used by future historians. Hollinger, an expert in the history of religion and ethnicity in America, says he and other historians on the project’s advisory committee will help researchers “identify historically important questions to be asked of individuals being interviewed.” "I’m glad to work with the Columbia Oral History Program, since it is, like Berkeley’s, one of the finest in the world,” said Hollinger. More information about this story can be found here.

April 17, 2019

Dr. Sarah Gold McBride, visiting lecturer in the Department of History, has been selected as a recipient of the Faculty Award for Outstanding Mentorship of Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs). The award recognizes faculty who have provided GSIs outstanding mentorship in teaching at Berkeley and in preparing for teaching in future careers. Faculty receive this award based on nominations from their GSIs and letters of support from departmental chairs. The four recipients of this year's award will be honored at a ceremony and reception on May 15th at the Women's Faculty Club.

April 15, 2019

Two UC Berkeley history professors, Brian DeLay and James Vernon, have been awarded 2019 Guggenheim Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Guggenheim fellowships are grants that allow recipients the time and creative freedom to complete their research, books or other projects.

March 27, 2019

Ethan Shagan has been selected to receive the 2019 Distinguished Teaching Award, UC Berkeley's most prestigious honor for teaching. The award, bestowed by the Academic Senate’s Committee on Teaching, recognizes teaching that incites intellectual curiosity in students, engages them thoroughly in the enterprise of learning, and has a lifelong impact. Students, faculty, and staff are invited to celebrate Professor Shagan and three other faculty recipients at a ceremony and reception on April 24, 2019 in Sibley Auditorium at 5pm.

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

Assistant Professor Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers' book, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (Yale University Press, 2019) has been recommended by The New York Times as an Editors' Choice selection. Called a "taut and cogent corrective" by Times critic Parul Sehgal, Jones-Rogers' book was reviewed in depth in the Books of the Times section (Feb. 26, 2019).
Assistant Professor Caitlin Rosenthal has been selected as this year’s recipient of the Carol D. Soc Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Award for Early Career Faculty. Caitlin's nomination rose from a pool of numerous nominees for this campus-wide award that recognizes faculty for outstanding mentorship of graduate students at UC Berkeley. The award comes with a financial prize and a commemorative plaque, which will be presented at a ceremony on Tuesday, April 16, 2019, 4:00-6:00 pm, at Anna Head Alumnae Hall.

March 5, 2019

Assistant Professor Elena A. Schneider has won the 2019 FEEGI (Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction) Book Prize for her book, The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade, and Slavery in the Atlantic World (Omohundro Institute/University of North Carolina Press, 2018). FEEGI prizes "recognize outstanding and path-breaking scholarship that furthers our historical understanding of the circumstances, causes, and consequences of increased global interaction, worldwide exchanges, and cross-cultural connections in the early modern period."

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

The American Historical Association (AHA) named three UC Berkeley faculty members among its prize recipients for 2018. Prizes are to be awarded at the AHA's annual meeting in Chicago on January 3–6, 2019.

September 18, 2018

UC Berkeley News

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

On May 26, Bard College awarded an honorary doctoral degree to Professor Emeritus Martin E. Jay during the College's 158th Commencement Ceremony. Professor Jay joins a prestigious group of individuals to have received honorary degrees from Bard College, including Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky, Martin Luther King, Jr, and many other notable figures.

May 25, 2018

Professor Cathryn Carson will be one of 20 UC Berkeley faculty members to take part in the inaugural Faculty Leadership Academy in Spring 2019.

April 30, 2018

The Division of Social Sciences in the College of Letters and Science has selected Stephanie Jones-Rogers, assistant professor of history, as a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award for the 2016-2017 academic year. Each year the Division recognizes faculty who are outstanding for their excellence in graduate and undergraduate classroom teaching.

April 10, 2018

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has awarded fellowships to three Department of History faculty members. From a pool of nearly 1,150 applicants, peer reviewers awarded fellowships to 78 individuals, including Professor Dylan Penningroth, Associate Professor Nicolas Tackett, and Dr. Stacey Van Vleet, a visiting lecturer.

March 20, 2018

The American Historical Association has named the UC Berkeley Department of History as one of 20 recipients of a 2018–20 Career Diversity Implementation Grant, part of the Career Diversity for Historians initiative.

March 1, 2018

The American Council of Learned Societies has named Associate Professor Christine Philliou as a 2018 Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellow. Philliou, who specializes in the political and social history of the Ottoman Empire, will utilize the fellowship to complete research on The Many Deaths of the Ottoman Empire, 1800-2017 at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 2019-2020.

January 16, 2018

UC Berkeley News

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

An article published on September 6 in the Charleston City Paper highlights research by Assistant Professor Stephanie Jones-Rogers.

July 27, 2017

The Berkeley Blog

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.

May 2, 2017

Clare Ibarra, a history graduate student instructor (GSI), has been recognized with a 2017 Teaching Effectiveness Award for her essay, "Bridging the Gap between K-12 and University-level History." The Teaching Effectiveness Award for GSIs honors a small number of GSIs who devise solutions to teaching or learning problems they have identified in their classes and write them up in a one-page essay.