History Department News and Research

Britt Tevis, Phyllis Backer Professor of Jewish Studies and assistant professor of history, has edited an anthology, Sanctioned Bigotry: A Documented History of Antisemitism in the United States (Yale University Press, 2026). Tevis uses a variety of sources to chart the course of antisemitism in the United States from the colonial period to the present day.

Andrew Wender Cohen, professor and director of graduate studies in the History Department, has written Gangster of New York: A Violent Life in Nineteenth Century America (Cambridge University Press, 2026). The book traces the extraordinary life of Louis Bieral, a 19th-century gangster, politician, sportsman and Civil War hero whose turbulent journey illuminates the violence woven into the fabric of American life.

Co-authored by Assistant Professor of Geography and the Environment Meghan Kelly; Maxwell Ph.D. students Cameron Kline, Rachel Ameen and Brooklyn Montgomery; and Maxwell alum Simone Yoxall, the article was published in Cartographic Perspectives.

The article, co-authored by Associate Professor of History Robert Terrell and William Henry Johnson ’25 B.A. (Hist), was published in Central European History.

Alan Allport, professor of history, has written Advance Britannia: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1942-1945 (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2026). The book is a sequel to Allport’s 2020 work Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1938-1941 (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2020).

Omar Cheta, assistant professor of history, has written How Commerce Became Legal: Merchants and Market Governance in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2025). The book explores Egypt’s adoption of a new infrastructure of commercial laws and institutions following the country’s opening to private capital in the 1840s. 

Gladys McCormick, associate dean and professor of history, has written a new book, The Last Door: A History of Torture in Mexico's War against Subversives (University of California Press, 2025). The book explores how the Mexican government increasingly used torture to suppress dissent as guerrilla movements spread across Mexico in the 1970s. 

The chapter, co-authored by Professor of History Albrecht Diem, was published in “The Many Worlds of Otmar: St. Gall and European Monasticism from the 7th to the 9th Century.”

The chapter, written by Professor of History Albrecht Diem, was published in “The Many Worlds of Otmar: St. Gall and European Monasticism from the 7th to the 9th Century.”

Robert S. Terrell, assistant professor of history, has written A Nation Fermented: Beer, Bavaria, and the Making of Modern Germany (Oxford University Press, 2024). Terrell traces how brewing practices in Germany’s southern region of Bavaria became associated with the nation as a whole from the late 19th to the end of the 20th century.

The translation, “Someone’s Rule for Virgins,” in Professor Albrecht Diem's “The Pursuit of Salvation: Community, Space, and Discipline in Early Medieval Monasticism” (Brepols, 2021), is currently featured as the Translation of the Month on Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index.

“Carrying the Cross: Popular Christian Communities and Religious Protest during Pinochet's Dictatorship, 1973–90,” authored by Assistant Professor of History Denisa Jashari, was published in the Journal of Latin American Studies.

“The Chilean Christians for Socialism Movement: Liberationist, Third Worldist, and Utopian,” written by Assistant Professor of History Denisa Jashari, was published in Latin American Research Review.

Omar Cheta, assistant professor of history, contributed a chapter titled “Hostages of Credit: The Imprisonment of Debtors in the Khedival Period” to the book “The Oxford Handbook of Modern Egyptian History” (Oxford Academci, 2024).

Osamah Khalil, professor of history and chair of the International Relations Undergraduate Program, has written “A World of Enemies: America’s Wars at Home and Abroad from Kennedy to Biden” (Harvard University Press, 2024).