In Recent News...
Civil Air Patrol honors History PhD student with 2025 Historian of the Year award
June 2025
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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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!)
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 91st 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.
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.
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.”
New book alert!
Michael Krysko's latest book Contested Airwaves: American Radio at Home and Abroad, 1914-1946 was just published by the University of Illinois Press.
Congratulations to our Fall 2024 Graduates!
Dr. Matt Kotowski (Security Studies) and Dr. Ken Smith (History)
MA Graduates
Sydney Wolgast
MA Thesis: “'Genius equall to that which wrought another most beautifull Poem': Classical Communication in the Writings of Mercy Otis Warren and Judith Sargent Murray."
Holly Hill
MA Thesis: "Midwest by southeast: Aircraft manufacturing and the journey to Lao community building in Wichita, Kansas, 1975—1995”
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).
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.