Spring ’25 in Review – One for the History Books

The Department of History at UIC had an outstanding Spring 2025 semester. Our faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, and alumni continued to achieve remarkable recognition in the discipline, the press, and beyond. Their achievements show off how multifaceted and impactful historical scholarship and engagement can be.

Annual Gilbert Osofsky Award Ceremony and Lecture

The Department hosted the annual Gilbert Osofsky Award Ceremony and Lecture on April 30, 2025. Prof. Kevin Schultz (Department Chair), Prof. Junaid Quadri (Director of Undergraduate Studies), and Prof. Gosia Fidelis (Director of Graduate Studies) led the Department and guests in celebrating departmental achievements, recognizing program graduates, and presenting students awards. Prof. Lilia Fernández was awarded the Shirley A. Bill Award in recognition for her excellence in teaching, as selected by a vote of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate history majors. Later, Prof. Stephanie McCurry of Columbia University delivered the keynote address titled “A Revolution in Every Household and Family: A New History of Reconstruction.” Prof. McCurrie outlined her upcoming book on Reconstruction, powerfully tracing the ruptures brought about and settlements necessitated by the end of slavery in newly free housholds, both Black and White.

Special Events

The Department once again successfully hosted the 2025 Illinois High School Academic Decathlon State Championships on March 8, with Whitney Young taking the state championship for another year. Over thirty department members volunteered as judges, and we’re keeping our fingers crossed that some participants will become history majors!

On February 19, the Department hosted the 9th-grade class of Farragut Career Academy High School for their annual Model United Nations symposium. Led by Farragut World Studies teacher Cary Bolnick (UIC MAT) and faciliated by MAT student Lucy Wilson and department volunteers, over one hundred students drafted and debated proposals to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Publications

Books

Prof. Kevin Schultz celebrated the May 2 release of his new book, Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A History (University of Chicago Press). The book traces the hundred-year history of the term “liberal” in American political and intellectual life, arguing that political movememnts left, right, and center have been united by hatred of an amorphous “liberal” enemy. The book was excerpted as the lead piece in Harper’s Magazine’s June 175th anniversary issue and featured in Chicago Magazine. This was a very busy semester for Prof. Schultz; he appeared on the Joan Esposito Show for a half-hour live interview about his book and was interviewed by Reuters about Chicago’s new pope. He also published an article in The Conversation titled “FDR united Democrats under the banner of ‘liberalism’ – but today’s Democratic Party has nothing to put on its hat,” gave a talk at the Kansas City Public Library to over 100 attendees, and made the rounds of the history and politics podcast circuits.

Prof. Danielle Beaujon published Criminalizing the Casbahs: Policing North Africans in Marseille and Algiers, 1918-1954 (Cornell University Press). The book explores how French police officers in these two cities associated spaces they saw as North African with a particular form of criminality, tracing how police practices mapped the racialization of North African colonial subjects onto urban space with lasting consequences for post-colonial policing.

Prof. Elizabeth Todd-Breland’s co-authored book I Didn’t Come Here to Lie: My Life and Education (Haymarket Books) was published after being named by Ms. Magazine as one of the “most anticipated feminist books of 2025.” The book, completed after famous Chicago labor organizer Karen GJ Lewis’s death in 2021, reflect’s Prof. Todd-Breland’s monumental effort to contextualize and craft a vast archive of interview notes with Lewis into a powerful memoir.

Prof. Robert Johnston co-authored the new edition of the textbook The American Century: A History of the United States Since the 1890s (Routledge). His pathbreaking work writing the very recent political history of the Obama and Trump years joins stellar work by co-authors Walter LaFeber, Richard Polenberg, and Nancy Woloch. Many in the department will remember Prof. Johnston’s brownbag presentation on the book’s final chapter.

Prof. Mark Liechty co-edited Nepal in the Long 1950s (Martin Chauturi), which has “created something of a stir in Nepal academic circles” by applying a global social/cultural lens to a key era traditionally approached through diplomatic and ‘Great Men’ historiography. Prof. Liechty also contributed a chapter on Boris Lissanevitch, Kathmandu’s Royal Hotel, and tourism’s “Golden Age” in Nepal.

Dr. Zane Elward (UIC B.A., 2014)‘s manuscript Comic Fascism: Ideology, Americanism, and Catholicism in Italian Children’s Periodicals (OSU Press) was published in July. Elward completed his PhD at Indiana University, Bloomington in 2022 and is now serving as Assistant Professor of History at Marian University, Indianapolis. His recent work also includes a chapter on teaching history through graphic novels and articles on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Articles and Chapters

Prof. Jon Connolly published “Granville Sharp’s Ancient Constitution: Legal Argument and Antislavery Thought” in Modern Intellectual History. The article examines how British jurist Granville Sharp crafted antislavery legal arguments that aligned with both progress and British identity, ultimately arguing that Sharp’s antislavery jurisprudence was both legal and political, “melding the radical cause of abolition with the notion of tradition.”

Prof. Keely Stauter-Halsted published “Negotiated Filtration: The Surprising Fate of Poland’s Postimperial Civil Servants” in Contemporary European History. The article explains how “despite what has been characterised as a nationalising state, the early years of the Polish Second Republic witnessed a negotiated filtration process, in which functionaries demonstrated their commitment to Poland by appealing to a combination of non-national characteristics, including ties to locale, to professional acumen, and to the civil service in general.”

PhD candidate Anindita Ghosh published her first essay as a historian, a lengthy literature review titled “Seeing Like a Princely State: A Review of the Political and Politics” in the peer-reviewed open-access journal South Asia Chronicle.

PhD candidate Sohini Mukhopadhyay published “Janmashashon: Sexology, Birth Control, and the Nation” as a chapter in Exploring Power and Authority in Indian History Across the Ages, edited by Vijaya Ramadas Mandala (Springer). The article examines the interplay of sexology, birth control, and nationalism in colonial Bengal, exploring how amateur Bengali sexologists appropriated Western theories to construct a distinct sexology suited to Bengali society’s needs and interests.

Prof. Jonathan Daly’s piece “Richard Pipes: Humanist, Cold Warrior” appeared in the Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method’s Key Thinkers series.

Awards, Recogniton, & Fellowships

Prof. Jennifer Brier was named an LAS Distinguished Professor by the Dean, recognizing her exceptional scholarship and contributions to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and to the UIC community.  She will give a public lecture as part of this recognition in the coming academic year. Prof. Brier also won a faculty fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for her ongoing book project History Moves: Oral History, Historical Belonging and Social Wellbeing. The book builds on a decade of work with her community-based, participant-driven, born-digital oral history project. If that  wasn’t enough, Prof. Brier also made her second appearance on WBEZ’s Reset with Sasha Ann Simons, this time discussing the history of Fanny Barrier Williams and the Black Women’s Club Movement. This fascinating Progressive Era story explores how civic clubs were thought to be useful avenues to access middle-class life and how Fanny Barrier Williams, Ida B. Wells’ contemporary and friend, used her barrier-breaking role in civic clubs to push for political equality.

Prof. Elizabeth Todd-Breland was named an NEH-sponsored Hull House Faculty Fellow. She will attend a one-week workshop this summer and participate in events throughout the academic year, using the fellowship to revise sections of her History of Chicago class, create a new course on the history of urban renewal, and expand her existing work creating internship opportunities.

Dr. Caterina Scalvedi (UIC Ph.D., 2023) was awarded the tremendously prestigious, two-year-long, EU-funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship. Her Curie proposal received an unprecedented score of 100/100, which, as Prof. Marina Mogilner noted, “is theoretically impossible.” She will work on expanding her project, “Colonial Education in Transnational and Transactional Networks: A Global Intellectual History (1900-1961),” based in Berlin under Sebastian Conrad at Freie Universität.

Prof. Young Richard Kim—a 2024-25 faculty fellow at the UIC Institute for the Humanitites—presented “Cyprus and the Historiography of Late Antiquity: The Environmental Turn” at the Institute and “The ‘Cyprus Problem’ and the Limits of Academic Research” at the Society for Classical Studies Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. He also delivered four invited lectures on topics ranging from the Council of Nicaea to Cypriot holy men.

Prof. Zack Cuyler was officially announced as a 2025-26 faculty fellow at the UIC Institute for the Humanities. We look forward to seeing his ongoing project—”Fossil Lebanon: Oil and the Making of the Lebanese State”—evolve and unfold!

PhD candidate Paul Ribera was accepted into UIC’s Inclusive Education Scholars Certificate Program and presented “Legislative and Bureaucratic Violence: Colonization, Whitening, and Belonging in Bolivia 1930-1960” at multiple conferences, including the MTSU Holocaust Studies Conference and the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies Conference in Mexico City.

PhD candidate Nico Soto was named the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy’s Emerging Scholar in Residence for spring 2025 and received a 2025 Dissertation Research Grant to support his dissertation research on how seasonal Mexican migrants remade the Midwestern heartland after the bracero program ended.

PhD candidate Taylor Mazique was awarded the WARC School Fellowship from Archiving the Black Web (ATBW), which will help her build web archiving skills to manage her own digital archive, The Black Girl Archive, which she launched in 2024.

The Department was also proud to present internal awards in recognition of excellent student work in history:

• Gordon Lee Goodman Award for Distinction in Undergraduate Studies – Daniel Kaliszyk
• Richard S. Levy Undergraduate Research Award – Christian Rodriguez-Hernandez
• Richard S. Levy Pathway to History Award – Spring 2025: Aymaan Iqbal, Kacper Budz, Jesus Segundo, Evanne Cordova, Samuel Sherman, and Octavian Patino; Fall 2024: Stephen Wilson, Hashoun Marks, Michael Hudgins, and Ramneet Sekhon
• Adeline Barry Davee and Ruth Dunbar Davee Scholarship – Rodrigo Vega
• Marion S. Miller Dissertation Fellowship – Avash Bhandari and Sarah Barton
• History of Poland Scholarship – Joanna Dobrowska

Graduates Making Their Mark

Dr. Elizabeth Maher successfully defended her dissertation “Building Mechanical Boys: A Raced and Gendered History of Autism in the United States.” Her study examines how discourse around autism served as a means of expressing changing views on race, gender, class, disability, and humanity in the mid- to late-20th century United States. She previously won both the National Academy of Education (NAEd)/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship and was named a 2024-25 Research Fellow at the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine.

Dr. Marla McMackin defended her dissertation “The Other Boomers: Chicago Youth and the Politics of Poverty,” examining what happened when the Hull House Association established new neighborhood centers in Uptown and Lakeview and affiliated with existing centers in Woodlawn and LeClaire Courts. Her work consists of four community studies that contextualize youth agency as the result of long processes of community development.

Prof. Ben Whisenhunt (UIC Ph.D., 1997 and Visiting Lecturer) presented “The Liberation of Albert Rhys Williams: 1918 and the Trip Home” at the National Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) in Boston.

Dr. Joshua Hoxmeier (UIC Ph.D., 2024) received a tenure-track position in American History at Benedictine College near Kansas City. His dissertation examined the persistence of Catholicism in Lincoln, Nebraska, developing the concept of “siege mentality” to describe successful diocesan strategies. When Josh first came to UIC, his dream was to teach at a small Catholic liberal arts college in the Midwest—exactly where he is now headed.

Sara Gawo (UIC history major) continues her studies in the MA Public History program at Loyola University Chicago while working as library coordinator at the Ashurbanipal Library of the Assyrian Cultural Foundation in Lincolnwood. She co-produced special lectures for the Assyrian community and hosted the “Assyrian Cultural Celebration” at the Westin O’Hare.

We congratulate all our faculty, students, and alumni on their outstanding achievements!