Faculty News

Achievements and News from our History Faculty

Professor Manu Bhagavan’s Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit: A Biography (Allen Lane, 2023) reached No. 3 on the Asian Age Nonfiction Bestseller list!

Professor Jill Rosenthal’s new book, From Migrants to Refugees: The Politics of Aid Along the Tanzania-Rwanda Border, was published by Duke University Press in 2023. Congratulations!

Professor Elidor Mëhilli published an Albanian translation of his monograph, Nga Stalini te Mao: Shqipëria dhe Bota Socialiste (AIIS, 2023). He also coordinated student work using the Wilson Center Digital Archive, edited their work, curated its posting to the site, and wrote an introduction on “Centering Eastern Europe’s Cold War through the Wilson Center Digital Archive,” https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/centering-eastern-europes-cold-war-through-wilson-center-digital-archive

Professor Vanessa May’s article ““It is Our Job to Make Him a Worker”: Child Labor and Youth Employment in Postwar America,” was published in the flagship Journal of American History vol. 110, no. 3 (December 2023), 474-496. https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaad264 Congratulations!

Professor Ben Hett published “Opinion: 2024 could be the year America fends off dictatorship, or invites it in,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 31, 2023: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-12-31/donald-trump-dictatorship-germany-1930s-threats-democracy

Professor Donna Haverty-Stacke’s article, “Bobby Pins, Belts and Diets: Survival Strategies of Women Political Prisoners within the Gendered Carceral regime at Alderson Prison, 1944 – 1960,” was published in Gender & History, 23 May 2024, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12793

Professor Donna Haverty-Stacke's new book The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist, Feminist was published by NYU Press in 2021. Congratulations!

Professor Manu Bhagavan delivered a talk titled "India on the Edge" for the World Affairs Council of New Hampshire. You can watch the talk here.

Congratulations to Professor Eduardo Contreras, whose book Latinos and the Liberal City: Politics and Protest in San Francisco (University of Pennsylvania Press) is the winner of the 2020 David Montgomery Award for the best book on a topic in American labor and working-class history.The David Montgomery Award is given annually by the Organization of American Historians with co-sponsorship by the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA). The award is given in recognition of David Montgomery’s crucial role in pioneering new approaches to the study of working people and their history.

Professor Elidor Mëhilli was featured in the Washington Post. His piece "Albania’s plan against disinformation lets Facebook and powerful politicians off the hook" was published in outlets like The Conversation, Salon, and TheWire (India). 

Professor Manu Bhagavan presented on "Life and thought of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit" at Somerville College, Oxford University. The event was part of the Global Thinkers Of The International Research Project, founded in 2017. 

Congratulations to Professor Benjamin Hett, whose book The Death of Democracy (Allen Lane Canada/Penguin Canada) is the winner of the 2019 Vine Award for History. The Vine Award for Canadian Jewish Literature is a major literary award presented annually by Toronto’s Koffler Centre of the Arts. The Jury noted: “The Death of Democracy, a briskly written history of the not-at-all inevitable transition from the Weimar Republic to fascist Germany, focuses on individuals in order to tell the story but also to remind us that it is the choices of individuals that make history.” Additionally, The Death of Democracy was named a "Book of the Week" by CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS and a Best Book of the Year by the Daily Telegraph (UK) and The Times of London.

Congratulations to Professor Jonathan Rosenberg, for the publication of his book Dangerous Melodies: Classical Music in America from the Great War through the Cold War (Norton), which was featured on NPR's Weekend Edition, on C-SPAN, and on BackStory. Professor Rosenberg delivered book talks on Dangerous Melodies at Harvard Book Store, Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C, at Bronx River Books, and other venues across the country. 

Congratulations to Professor Manu Bhagavan, whose edited volume India and the Cold War was launched at the Roosevelt House - Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, on November 5th, 2019.

Congratulations to Professor D'Weston Haywood, whose book Let Us Make Men:The Twentieth-Century Black Press and a Manly Vision for Racial Advancement (University of North Carolina Press) received a Honorable Mention for the 2019 Pauli Murray Book Prize, presented by the African American Intellectual History Society. The African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) is a scholarly organization that aims to foster dialogue about researching, writing, and teaching black thought and culture.

Congratulations to Professor Laura Schor, whose book Sophie Halaby in Jerusalem: An Artist's Life was published with Syracuse University Press. A pioneer among Palestinian artists, Sophie Halaby was the first Arab woman to study art in Paris, subsequently living independently as a professional painter in Jerusalem throughout her life. Schor’s book shines new light on this little-known artist and enriches our understanding of modern Palestinian history. Schor presented her book at the Marlene Meyerson JCC in Manhattan and at the Middle East Books and More in Washington DC. 

Congratulations to Professor Daniel Hurewitz, who is also a playwright, and whose play "Nancy F***ing Reagan" opened at the Secret Rose Theatre in Los Angeles in July 2019. His latest in a number of plays, "Nancy F***ing Reagan" won the Christopher Hewitt Award and was a finalist for the Ashland New Plays Festival in 2018. Professor Hurewitz discussed the play on Rainbow Radio.

International Workers' Day is celebrated every year on May 1st. Professor Donna Haverty-Stacke, author of America’s Forgotten Holiday: May Day and Nationalism, 1867–1960 (NYU Press) spoke with "On the Media" at WNYC Studios about the American origin of May Day — and about how it has come to be forgotten.

Professor Karen Kern, along with Yael Rosenfield, Federico Carò, and Nobuko Shibayama, published "The Sacred and the Modern: The History, Conservation and Science of the Madina Sitara" in the Metropolitan Museum Journal.