reflecting on 2026 and bringing in the new year
Washington University's History department celebrates its five PhD graduates of 2026. Ruochen Chen, Richard Harrod, Kim Lacey, Bridget Kelly, and Josiah Schmidt are beginning new chapters at universities and cultural institutions across the United States and abroad.
From conducting research and sharing with the broader community, to earning prestigious scholarships, WashU History’s undergraduates had a great year! Our students demonstrate creativity, research skills, and impact that contribute to the Department of History.
A history degree opens doors to far more than a single career path. The skills developed through historical study prepare graduates to succeed across a wide range of professions.
Greetings from the Department of History at Washington University in St. Louis!
It is my pleasure as chair to offer a brief overview of this year’s many activities and accomplishments, followed by links to recent news items and interviews. Please help us stay up to date on your news by sharing milestones in your own lives via this online form, or feel free to send an email to history@wustl.edu.
WashU has had a tumultuous year. Budgets have been cut, graduate programs trimmed, and job searches suspended. Generative AI is here. The release of the WashU / Vanderbilt Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences over the summer came as a surprise to faculty and students and continues to provoke lively debate. Without downplaying any of these challenges, I’d like to draw attention to some of the many ways in which History continues to thrive at WashU.
The graduate program had a big year. For one thing, it turned 100! Inspired by the unexpected discovery a few years ago that WashU granted its first PhD in History in 1926, we threw a party to celebrate on Saturday, September 19, with a large group of alumnae, current students and faculty, and donors. Among the highlights were presentations from more than a dozen alums and the announcement that the Goldschmidt Foundation has endowed a graduate fellowship in History. Please read on for coverage of this wonderful event, including interviews with several History alums. If you were unable to attend but would like to watch the recording, please contact us at history@wustl.edu.
Our graduate students are thriving. We awarded five PhDs over the past year, and every student is gainfully employed. Ruochen Chen is a visiting lecturer at Duke Kunshan University, Richard Harrod has started as an assistant professor at United Arab Emirates University, Bridget Kelly is an instructor at the University of South Carolina, Kim Lacey has accepted a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, and Josiah Schmidt is directing an arts program at the St. Louis Jewish Community Center. We wish them well. Our current graduate students, moreover, are winning accolades. To name just two: Pei-Hsu Lin received a Korea Foundation Scholarship for her dissertation on technology in colonial Korea and Lee Morrison won the Andy Kelly Prize for Best Article from Viator for a piece on the daily life of religious communities in medieval Genoa.
Our undergraduate program is also doing well. This year we have fourteen seniors working on honors theses, with topics spanning everything from thirteenth-century heresy to managers in post-war Hong Kong. We are also working hard to expand the range of undergraduate research opportunities. This includes getting involved with the Advancing Research Culture program, which paired first-year students with faculty mentors Lori Watt and Dalen Wakeley-Smith last year. It also includes our in-house Living History program, which last year resulted in a podcast on British East African soldiers during the Second World War and a documentary short on death and inequality in two St. Louis cemeteries. Read more about the projects in our Q&A with Living History Scholars.
Last but not least, I’d like to give a shout out to the tremendous successes of our undergraduate alumnae. Last spring we welcomed back to campus Mary Bruce (AB ’05), now White House Correspondent for ABC News. She was here to receive a distinguished alumnae award. Other History alums to highlight include Lauren Henley (AB ’15), now assistant professor at the University of Richmond, who published Inquisition for Blood: The Making of a Black Serial Killer in the Jim Crow South (LSU Press 2026); and Kristen Ehrenberger (AB ’04), now associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh, who published The Politics of the Table: Nutrition and the Body in Modern Germany (Johns Hopkins 2026). For news stories and interviews with these and many other History alums, please explore our department news.
Faculty, too, have been thriving. Five are on fellowship leave with awards from the ACLS, the National Humanities Center, the Frankel Institute at the University of Michigan, and WashU’s own Center for the Humanities. Meanwhile, faculty continue to publish groundbreaking research. To mention just a few selections from our associate professors: Cassie Adcock co-edited and wrote an article for a special issue of the Journal of South Asian Studies on “Hindu Economicus”; Uluğ Kuzuoğlu published a piece in a special issue of the Journal of Asian Studies on “Unicode and the Humanities”; and Sowande’ Mustakeem placed an essay on women and crime in Carceral Architecture: From Within and Beyond the Prison Walls. You can find more faculty publications in our recent publications roundup. Coming soon, finally, is Lori Watt’s second book, From Empire to Internationalism: Japan’s Integration into the Postwar World Order (Cornell UP 2026).
We certainly have much to celebrate!
Corinna Treitel, Chair and Professor of History
Advancement
Peter Kastor received a distinguished faculty award during the 2025 Founders Day celebration.
Sowande’ Mustakeem will receive a 2026 Dred Scott Freedom Award from the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation.
Douglas Flowe, associate professor of history at WashU, has been awarded a residential fellowship from the National Humanities Center for the 2026–2027 academic year.
Flowe’s project, American Darkness: Black Men in New York’s Jim Crow Prisons, explores the lives of Black men in early twentieth-century New York’s penal system, tracing how incarceration shaped their experiences and the broader dynamics of race and punishment. The project will be the focus of his work during his residency at the Center, where the fellowship will support a year of research and writing as he completes the manuscript.
Diana J. Montaño and Christina Ramos have been selected as Georgie W. Lewis Career Development Professors. Their endowed positions were made possible by a gift from alumna Georgie W. Lewis.
Jonathan Judaken, the Gloria M. Goldstein Professor of Jewish History and Thought, has won the Dorothy Rosenberg Prize for his book, “Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism” (Columbia University Press). Awarded annually by the American Historical Association (AHA), the honor recognizes the most distinguished work of scholarship on the history of the Jewish diaspora published in English during the past year.
1776, Then and Now The John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics will offer a course, “1776, Then and Now,” which will be open to all WashU undergrads in the spring 2026 semester. The course will run one time only as a way to commemorate and respond in 2026 to the events of 1776 and the founding of the United States.
Christine Johnson Christine Johnson, associate professor of history and a Faculty Fellow in the Center for the Humanities, discusses her book project, “The German Nation and the Holy Roman Empire, 1440-1556.” With her study, she aims to reshape our understanding of how Germany came into being in political as well as intellectual terms.
People join movements for many reasons. The American Revolution was no different, says Peter Kastor, professor of history and of American culture studies in WashU Arts & Sciences. Peter Kastor shares his expertise on American political and presidential history through several recent articles and podcast appearances.
Ben Wexler, graduate student in History, recently published a paper in the journal Narahaim.
"Mimetic Violence and Sacred Performance in Charlotte Salomon’s Leben? oder Theatre?"
Richard Harrod, recent graduate of the History PhD program, examines how an experimental farm in 1960s Oman introduced new agricultural crops as a way for the newly established government to gain the support of local farmers following a war of conquest.
Throughout 2025 and into 2026, Teaching Professor Krister Knapp, Teaching Professor and Minor Adviser in History, contributed several pieces to The Source and Student Life, offering viewpoints on U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts. Knapp explores how the past can help us understand today's political landscape.
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