Dr. Tiemeyer interviewed on Australian radio station

October 2025: Dr. Phil Tiemeyer was the guest on an interview for ABC in Australia. The interview, titled "Come Fly with Me: Women in Aviation" took place for the show “Late Night Live,” which is the #2 radio show in the country, on a station called ABC Radio National. Click here to listen to the 20 minute interview.

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New Faculty Publications

The July 2025 issue of the Journal of Military History features an article by Dr. Marjorie Galelli entitled "The Human Terrain System Controversy: Anthropology and the Iraq War," in which she analyses the academic-military gap brought to light by the U.S. military's creation of a Human Terrain System program during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Dr. Suzanne Orr's latest article, "Communism's Other: White Russian Refugees and US Immigration Policy, 1917-1934," was published in the Spring 2025 issue of the Journal of American Ethnic History.

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Dr. Andrew Orr featured on "Ask a Kansan" Podcast

Watch it on YouTube here.

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Civil Air Patrol honors History PhD student with 2025 Historian of the Year award

Michael Santana, PhD student, has been awarded the 2025 Historian of the Year by the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), an Auxiliary of the United States Air Force. Santana was awarded the 2024 Historian of the Year for the Florida Wing and the Southeast Region of CAP.

Santana began by reaching out to other CAP historians such as Dr. Frank Blazich, who provided a treasure trove of documents about Florida’s role during CAP’s WWII wartime mission of spotting for submarines, assisting in tow target training, and search and rescue operations. He then built a mobile museum to showcase at local squadrons and FLWG conference, where he reconstructed the uniforms and equipment of Coastal Patrol Base 7 in Miami, FL. Finally, he became one of the few “senior” historians in the Florida Wing, and works to guide others down the path of helping preserve and disseminate historical knowledge.

“Kansas State University’s program was instrumental in helping me achieve this,” said Santana. “The coursework I took on the evolution of military strategy allowed me to tie my organization’s history with the larger historical trends of the mid twentieth century, and made every one of my lectures deeper and more detailed. Thank you, K-State, for helping me get this far.”

Currently ABD and working as a full-time History teacher back in Miami, FL, Santana’s dissertation focuses on the social and cultural makeup of the United States and Cuba, with special attention towards the interplay between the militaries of hegemonic powers and smaller states.

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New Book Alert!

Congratulations to Dr. Phil Tiemeyer, who has just had his new book, Women and the Jet Age, published by Cornell University Press.

Women and the Jet Age is a global history of postwar aviation that examines how states nurtured airlines for competing political and economic goals during the Cold War. While previous histories almost exclusively stress US and Western European aviation progress, Phil Tiemeyer examines how smaller, poorer states in socialist Eastern Europe and in the postcolonial Global South utilized airlines of their own to forge rival pathways to modernization. Buy here.

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New Publication Alert!

Dr. Ginette Aley's most recent article was published as the lead article in Middle West Review, the journal of Midwestern historians. It is: "Land of Lincoln, Land of Women: Midwestern Women's Views on Politics, War, and Abraham Lincoln," Middle West Review 11 (Spring 2025): 1-23.

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Congratulations to Our Newest MA and PhD Graduates!

• Kenzie Jansonius (MA, 2025), defended her thesis entitled "Accused, Exiled, Acquitted: Surviving Witchcraft Charges in Colonial New England"
• Scott McIntosh (PhD, 2025), defended his dissertation, "Yawing Toward Charybdis: Intelligence Influence on Johnson Administration Cold War Policy, 1964-1965"
• Roberta Meloni (PhD, 2025), defended her dissertation, "Unrealistic Expectations: Americans and International Radio in Cold War East Asia, 1951-75"

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Drs. Andrew Orr and Sean Kalic Featured on PBS's Cottonwood Connection Cold War Episodes

Dr. Andrew Orr and one of our department's former graduate students, Dr. Sean Kalic, contributed to the latest episodes in PBS's Cottonwood Connection series highlighting Kansas during the Cold War. You can watch the episodes below.

Kansas and the Cold War: The Big Picture

Kansas and the Cold War: The Conflict Comes Home

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Students in Dr. McCrea's "Social History of Medicine" Surveying Manhattan Campus for Accessibility

Students in HIST 534 circulated around campus equipped with wheelchairs and measuring tape to assess accessibility at K-State. They followed specific routes, including entering buildings, to see whether any paths might not be accessible to someone in a wheelchair. Students took turns riding and pushing the wheelchair, taking notes, and photographing troublesome areas. As part of their final exam, students then wrote a report to the school's Facilities Department. (Thank you to Meadowlark for lending us the wheelchairs!)

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K-State Graduate Students Display Military History Expertise in Mobile, AL

Five Kansas State University military history graduate students and two of their professors spent three days presenting research, participating in research reviews, professionally networking, and displaying their “Purple Pride” at the 91^st Annual, Society of Military History Annual Conference in Mobile, Alabama. Kansas State University had the largest single non-government contingent attending the conference with scholars from six of the seven continents. The conference is universally recognized by military historians as the largest single military history academic research event and showcase in the world with over six hundred attendees. Those Wildcats from our University participating in the conference were: Dr. Andrew Orr, Dr. Marjorie Galelli, Paxton Stover, Jett Nixon, Zane Whitney, Chuck Sexton, and Korey Lantes.

As part of the Conference and based on their specific area of emphasis/expertise the K-State contingent, participated in many of the over 100 academic research panels, roundtables, and presentations, as well as, directly interacted with the world-renowned military historians, Joyce Harrison the Editor in Chief of the University Press of Kansas, and senior editors representing 23 different major publishing houses.

In order to gain historical perspective and further research goals, students also toured several of the military history museums in and around Mobile, not the least of which the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park Museum, and the National Maritime Museum of the Gulf of Mexico.

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Faculty Research Spotlight - Dr. Marjorie Galelli

One of our faculty, Assistant Professor Marjorie Galelli, was recently featured in the K-State Research Weekly newsletter, focusing on her research:

Research overview:

I am finishing a book manuscript on the United States and the Iraq War that explains how the armed forces turned to counterinsurgency in search of an ever-elusive victory. The book weaves together a story of haphazard adaptation under pressure with that of a concerted effort to promote counterinsurgency and shape the conduct of the war, both on and beyond the battlefield. I am also in the early stages of a second research project building on my Hollywood and the Military course, which looks at the way movies and TV shows have actively shaped the story of the All-Volunteer Force.

What motivated you to pursue research in this specific field, and how has your focus evolved over time?

In many ways, my interest in military history is rooted in my home region, growing up in Alsace you're constantly surrounded by vestiges of the two world wars. Eventually, I decided to combine my interest for military history with my love of the United States and focused on U.S. military history.

What is your approach to this research?

I like starting with an interesting problem, a story that I want to investigate and understand better. I then dive into the sources and follow them until I find an angle that’s worth tackling, something that will change the way the story is told.

Have there been any significant challenges or breakthroughs in your recent research, and how have you addressed or leveraged them?

The main difficulty with recent history is that while many historical actors are still alive and I get to interview them, most official documents, especially military ones, are still classified. I can’t do research in the national archives, so I have to get pretty creative in order to find sources.

What is the potential impact of your research on your field and on broader societal issues?

In recent years, the military is the only institution that has consistently had the confidence of the American people, yet less than 1% of the population serves in the armed forces. Studying how those dynamics were shaped over time is essential to our understanding of U.S. society today.

Each week The Office of the Vice President for Research will feature one faculty member and their scholarly work in Research Weekly. If you would like to nominate yourself or a colleague, please fill out the online form.

*Please note that not all nominations will be accepted as there are limited publications each semester.

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History Department Graduate Students Selected to Present Research at the National World War II Museum

February 2025: Three History PhD students from the College of Arts and Sciences were selected to present their research at the 2025 Spring Emerging Scholars Colloquium at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The doctoral students Matthew Dale, Hannah Palsa, and Chuck Sexton were competitively selected to formally present their research from nearly one hundred PhD candidates, ABD, or Post-doc applicants from around the world. Kansas State University’s History students represent one of the largest single contingents of scholars selected from the field of applicants.

The Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy is the sponsor of the 3-day Colloquium whose overall goals are to inspire new conversations based on cutting-edge work that will foster a growing community of WWII scholars, and to provide early-career historians the opportunity to receive feedback on their developing research from Institute historians. The Jenny Craig Institute in cooperation with the National World War II Museum has generously financially sponsored this event by providing given air travel and three nights’ accommodation at The Higgins Hotel & Conference Center on the Museum’s campus, February 13–15.

Upon his selection as one of the three scholars, Chuck Sexton stated, “The selection of such a large number of Kansas State University PhD students demonstrates the quality and viability of the Military History program.”

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New Book Alert!

February 2025: Michael Krysko's latest book Contested Airwaves: American Radio at Home and Abroad, 1914-1946 was just published by the University of Illinois Press. Buy it here.

Congrats to our Fall 2024 Graduates!

• Dr. Matthew Kotowski (Security Studies)
• Dr. Ken Smith (History)

MA graduates: Holly Hill & Sydney Wolgast.

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Dr. Andrew Orr appeared on a 3-part PBS documentary on Kansas and the World Wars as part of the Cottonwood Connections series. It aired on Smoky Hills PBS stations and KTWU Topeka and it is available on YouTube (see episodes below).

• In Time of War: The Great War
• In Time of War: The Years in Between
• In Time of War: WWII

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Dr. Nadia Oweidat gave a talk at the Wilson Center (see video below) that inspired a high school student to reach out to her and create a documentary.

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. For more information, click HERE.

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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. See the full list HERE.

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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. Read more about Professor Frey's career in the History Department's e-newsletter, Historical Archives & Events, HERE.

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. Read more about Professor Parillo's career in the History Department's e-newsletter, Historical Archives & Events, HERE.

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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: http://www.ymlfuneralhome.com/obituary/6682

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.

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.