April 2023:

January 2023: Interested in international studies? Are you perhaps considering a study abroad experience? Tomorrow (Tuesday, Jan. 31) is the Education Abroad Fair in the Union Courtyard from 11am to 1pm. You can find out about all the programs K-State is offering in Summer and Fall 2023. Also, the K-State in Prague program includes a course by Prof. Brent Maner about history, museums, and identity. The offering can be paired with a communications class about the career of Vaclav Havel, one of the heroic voices of protest during the Cold War and a key actor in the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe after 1989. You can learn about this program and these great courses at: https://ksu.studioabroad.com/_portal/tds-program-brochure?programid=13157

March 2022: The Civil War Weekend public outreach event at Virginia Tech was a success! It drew about 100 attendees who came to learn and interact with scholars, and some went on a field trip to Harpers Ferry. A new initiative to "teach the teachers" was launched. Ginette Aley spoke about her current project, "Land of Lincoln, Land of Women."

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March 2022: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine - Roundtable Discussion: Discussing the history of events that lead up to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and what to possibly expect next - Presented by the Security Studies program, along with the Departments of Political Science and History. If you missed it, check out the recording.

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March 2022: Black Perspectives features graduate student Kenneth Smith's essay, "Tuskegee's Civilizing Mission": "This essay looks at how Tuskegee educators and supporters promoted Booker T. Washington’s Hampton-Tuskegee model of education in Africa during the age of American and European imperialism from the Berlin Conference of 1884 until the opening of the Booker Washington Institute in Kakata, Liberia, in 1929. The push for a Tuskegee Institute in Liberia indicated a coordinated diasporic effort to mobilize resources and institutionalize Black uplift. In the current age of Black Lives Matter, understanding the diasporic history of Black peoples is important to understanding how African Americans and Africans connect with each other in an era of continued discrimination and exploitation." https://www.aaihs.org/tuskegees-civilizing-mission/

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February 2022: The History Department congratulates doctoral student Billy Croslow, who has landed a position as Command Historian for the US Army Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Rucker, Alabama. His main responsibility will be to teach military history to Army Aviation officers. Billy successfully passed his preliminary exams in Fall 2021, and is now in the process of researching and writing his dissertation that focuses on Japanese-American military service during World War II. It’s looking like Billy has some busy, busy days in his immediate future. Congratulations, Billy Croslow!

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January 2022: PhD student Hannah Palsa recently had a paper/presentation nominated for two awards by the Northeast Popular & American Culture Association (NEPCA) from their Fall 2021 conference. Hannah's presentation at the October 2021 conference was titled “Tommy and His Dog, Hurry: War Dog Children’s Books, Films, and Cartoons of World War II.” In the presentation, she spoke about how media produced for children in the form of cartoons, literature, and film taught children about Dogs for Defense, Inc. and why their dogs were valuable to the war effort. In examining children’s literature, she also spoke about how books taught children about racism and patriotism through the use of fictional war dog platoons and their missions. This topic was based on a paper that Hannah wrote as a Masters student and her presented topic for the Kansas Military History Seminar at K-State in the Fall 2021. The topic was nominated for two prizes - the Carol Mitchell Prize and the Amos St. Germain Prize. Congratulations, Hannah!

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January 2022: The History Department is proud to announce that Dr. Ginette Aley has been invited as a speaker at the Civil War Weekend held at Virginia Tech in March 2022. She will speak on a panel of former Prof. James Robertson's students and on her work on Lincoln and Midwestern home front women. More information about the event is HERE.

October 2021:

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September 2021: Dr. Oweidat participated in a virtual event hosted by the Wilson Center on Thursday, September 9, commemorating 9/11 and the 20th anniversary. Watch the video recording HERE.

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July 2021: Congratulations to Assistant Professor Nadia Oweidat on being named on the list of 2021/2022 Wilson Center Fellows! Dr. Oweidat was picked as one of only 21 others to continue her research while in residence at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. during the Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 semesters.

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July 2021: The Department wishes to congratulate recent PhD graduate Dr. Scott Moseman on accepting a position of Assistant Professor at the Command and General Staff College (at the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command) at Fort Leavenworth. He will work for the Department of Joint, Interagency and Multinational Operations, using 20 years of experience in the navy to teach staff groups of senior Army captains and junior majors. Congratulations Dr. Moseman!

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June 2021: The Department of History congratulates the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 graduates in History and Security Studies, both undergraduate and graduate.

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June 2021: The History Department recognizes Professor Marsha Frey, who will retire after the Spring 2021 semester, for her forty-eight years of service. Professor Frey specializes in the history of early modern Europe, with expertise in European diplomacy. In collaboration with her sister, fellow historian Professor Linda Frey, Professor Frey published fourteen books and more than 100 articles and book chapters. Their works have been translated into Spanish, French, Dutch, and Hungarian. She also established herself as a committed and dedicated teacher whose courses on European history inspired many generations of students in her nearly five decades at Kansas State University.

The History Department also recognizes Professor Mark Parillo, who will retire after the Spring 2021 semester, for his twenty-nine years of service. Professor Parillo specializes in US military history, with particular expertise warfare in the industrial age with a special focus on World War II. His scholarship has explored many aspects of World War II, while his commitment to teaching has influenced a generation of undergraduate and graduate students that have come through our program since he joined the faculty in 1992.

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June 2021: An MA alumni and a current PhD student are presenting at the upcoming World War II Emerging Scholars Symposium. Hannah Palsa will present on Monday, June 1 and MA alumni Jorden Pitt (2019) will present on Tuesday, June 2. Congratulations to you both!

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May/June 2021: PhD student Hannah Palsa has published a new article, called "Topper’s GI Benefits, Good Homes, and Vivisection Fears: The Treatment of World War II War Dog Veterans" in the peer-reviewed historical blog Nursing Clio. To read the full article, click HERE. Congratulations on the published article, Hannah!

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May 2021: The History Department congratulates the undergraduate scholarship recipients for the 2021-2022 academic year! Click HERE to see the full list of winners.

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May 2021: The History Department congratulates the graduate student award recipients for 2021! Click HERE to see the full list of recipients.

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May 2021: Congratulations to Ashton Hess, majoring in both History and Geography, for being awarded the Dean of Student Life Outstanding Graduating Senior Award! Read more about the award from the K-State Today article HERE.
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April 2021: Bob Linder passed away April 4, 2021

Memorial contributions may be made to the Kansas State University Foundation Robert D. Linder History Scholarship.

The funeral home has published a very nice and very thorough obituary as well: https://www.ymlfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Robert-D-Linder?obId=23734538

Here is the original notice of Bob's passing.

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April 2021 Parrish Lecture - "Neolithic to New World: Global Histories of Plague" - Dr. Monica H. Green

The History Department held the 2021 Parrish Lecture April 13, from 7:00 - 8:30 PM via Zoom, featuring independent historian Dr. Monica H. Green talking about global histories of plague. The recording link is available on the Parrish Lecture page.

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February 2021: Statement in Support of the University Press of Kansas

The Department of History at Kansas State University issues this statement in support of the University Press of Kansas. Closure of the press or significant cuts to its operating budget would be a devastating blow to public education in the state. The press plays a critical role in disseminating research on Kansas and is deeply respected in academic publishing circles for its record of publishing excellent scholarship on military history, Presidential history, Civil War history, environmental history, and the history of Indigenous peoples. It is our responsibility as educators, public intellectuals, and authors to produce scholarship in these fields, particularly at a time when critical examinations of history are so essential to a functioning civil society. We often assign UPK books in our undergraduate and graduate courses, and students at KSU--whether history majors or not--directly benefit from its continued existence.

UPK’s potential closure would significantly undermine our ability, and that of our colleagues, to assign and publish work that contributes to both the scholarly canon and Kansans’ knowledge of their own diverse history and culture. If UPK is not publishing this scholarship, who will?

A selected list of books by current or former department members, published or under contract with UPK, includes:

• The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 (Modern War Studies) by David Stone (2015)
• Fighting Foreclosure: The Blaisdell Case, the Contract Clause, and the Great Depression by Derek S. Hoff and John A. Fliter (2012)
• John Brown to Bob Dole: Movers and Shakers in Kansas History edited by Virgil W. Dean (2010)
• Red Earth: Race and Agriculture in Oklahoma Territory by Bonnie Lynn-Sherow (2004)
• Watering the Valley: Development along the High Plains Arkansas River, 1870-1950 by James Sherow (1991)
• Kansas Governors by Homer E. Socolofsky (1990)
• The Presidency of Benjamin Harrison by Homer E. Socolofsky and Allan B. Spetter (1987)
• American Crossroad: Kansans and their Histories by Kristen Epps and Jim Leiker (under contract)

The Press’ mission is intimately tied to the success of public education in the Sunflower State. We ask the Board of Trustees of the Press to consider how to fully support UPK and ensure its survival.

Respectfully,

The Department of History

Kansas State University

Manhattan, Kansas

November 2020: Dr. Mike Hankins defended his dissertation at K-State in Spring 2018 and is now working at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. He recently sent word that he has signed a contract with Cornell University Press for the book based on his dissertation. Now it's officially "forthcoming." We congratulate Dr. Hankins on this fine accomplishment!

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October 2020: Nadia Oweidat, assistant professor and expert in the history of Islam, was awarded a Discourse Initiative Research Grant for the amount of $15,000 from the Institute for Humane Studies. The grant will support her efforts to complete her first book, "Reform and Its Perils in Contemporary Islam: The Case of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd." Learn more HERE. Congratulations, Dr. Oweidat!

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Dr. Daniel T. Gresham, who earned his PhD in Spring 2019, has published a new article in the journal Agricultural History on the Farmer's Independence Council. This article explores the ideology of the leaders of the Farmers' Independence Council of America (FIC) in order to understand why they created a conservative front group. Read and download the full JSTOR article here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3098/ah.2021.095.1.104

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Congratulations to Dr. Phil Tiemeyer, as his research was cited in the documents of the recent Supreme Court case that outlawed workplace discrimination against transgender, as well as lesbian, gay, and bisexual citizens.

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The Department of History would like to congratulate PhD student Scott Moseman for his most recent published article. The Journal of Intelligence History published Moseman's article "Truman and the Formation of the Central Intelligence Agency". Moseman wrote this paper for Dr. Mrozek's HIST928 seminar "United States 1945-1960" three years ago. It's an e-print, so there are 50 free reads before it goes to an abstract page.

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/BZMIZJRYHJ4JVVVAWYAK/full?target=10.1080/16161262.2020.1774233

Congratulations on the publication, Scott!

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The Department of History would like to officially announce the hiring of Associate Professor Kristen Epps, an historian of slavery, the sectional conflict, and the Civil War in the West. She will also serve as Managing Editor of Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains. Her first book, Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras, was published in 2016 by the University of Georgia Press as part of the Early American Places series. Kristen earned her Ph.D. at the University of Kansas in 2010, where she received the Marnie and Bill Argersinger Graduate School Award, awarded to the best dissertation across the university. She completed her master's degree at The College of William and Mary and her bachelor's degree at William Jewell College. She has taught at the University of Central Arkansas, Colorado State University-Pueblo, and the University of Kansas. She has also held positions at the Kansas Historical Society, The Journal of the Civil War Era, and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. More information about her work can be found at https://www.kristenepps.com/. She can be reached via email at kkepps@ksu.edu. Welcome to K-State, Dr. Epps!

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Congratulations to our undergraduate scholarship recipients and to our graduate award winners! We will miss celebrating you in-person as we usually do this year, but we still want to acknowledge your hard work and dedication to your chosen studies.

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We congratulate PhD student Hannah Palsa as she was a recent guest speaker in a new podcast, speaking about her research into the use of animals in wartime. Listen to the audio of the podcast HERE.

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Congratulations to Heather McCrea! She has been selected as the Department of History's new Kenneth S. Davis Professor of History. The Kenneth S. Davis Professorship is supported by an endowment established by the late Kenneth Davis (1912-1999). A Kansas native and 1934 graduate of Kansas State College, Davis became an award-winning historian whose biographies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Charles Lindbergh, Adlai Stevenson, and Dwight Eisenhower earned wide acclaim. He created the endowment to recognize a faculty member of KSU’s History Department who has compiled an overall record of professional excellence while demonstrating special success in teaching. In her fourteen years at Kansas State University, Heather McCrea has compiled just such a record. Her expansive involvement in both undergraduate and graduate education has entailed teaching courses that encompass many different geographies, cultures, and peoples from the ancient times through the modern era. Professor McCrea has enjoyed considerable success in inspiring her students' interest by using innovative and interdisciplinary teaching strategies, which incorporate active learning methodologies that often integrate her own ongoing historical research into participatory activities. It is a record befitting of Kenneth Davis' wishes that the person holding this chair "show an appreciation of the 'connectedness' of human experience, have a sense of the world that is comprehensive and broad, and display and imaginative gift devoted in substantial part to teaching." In earning this honor, Heather McCrea succeeds the late Al Hamscher, who was named the first Kenneth S. Davis Professor of History in 2008 and held the chair until his death in 2019.

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Charles W. Sanders Jr., associate professor of history, will retire on May 17 after 20 years of teaching, research and service to the department. He taught many American history courses and had a talent for making history come alive. Read the full article HERE.

James Sherow, university distinguished professor of history, will retire June 9. Sherow has spent the last 28 years at Kansas State University, teaching Environmental History and Kansas History, his signature course, among others. Read the full article HERE.

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On this day in the History Department history: 2 years ago, May 4, 2018, we celebrated the retirement of Dr. Robert Linder, after 53 years of influential teaching for the Department, with the planting of a tree right next to Hale Library's ground floor entrance. If you missed the ceremony, or want to relive that special day (and see Hale Library pre-fire) then take half an hour and watch the recording of the ceremony HERE.

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Congratulations to Dr. Benjamin McCloskey (modern languages and history appointments) and Dr. Mary Elizabeth Walters on winning a Faculty Enhancement Grant for 2021! View the full article in K-State Today.

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Congratulations to Mary Elizabeth Walters on her new podcast! "Humanitarian Ops: Opportunities, Challenges and Pitfalls" is now available for download and online listening HERE. The podcast discusses the question "When should the United States execute humanitarian operations and what questions should be asked and answered before it begins?"

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Congratulations to Dr. Mary Elizabeth Walters on a new article published in the Marine Corps History journal, entitled "Tree Hugging Work: The Shifting Attitudes and Practices of the U.S. Marine Corps Toward Peace Operations in the 1990s". Check out the full article (scroll to pg. 54) and the rest of the journal issue HERE.