History Department News and Research

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).

Dennis Romano, professor emeritus of history, has written “Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City” (Oxford University Press, 2024).

George Kallander, professor and director of graduate studies for the history department, has written his third book, “Human-Animal Relations and the Hunt in Korea and Northeast Asia” (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). 

Associate Professor of History Mark Schmeller's article, titled "Public Opinion," was included in "Democracies in America: Keywords for the Nineteenth Century and Today" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

"Constitutionalists, Despots, Whigs, and Revisionists: Tudor Parliamentary History in the 20th Century," written by Associate Professor of History Chris Kyle, was published in Parliamentary History.