Greetings from McMahon Hall!
The past academic year brought significant changes to our department. As of July 2025, we have become the Department of History and Anthropology, now situated within the new Division of Humanities (together with English and the Department of Ancient, Medieval Languages & Cultures) as part of the new College of Arts and Sciences.
Our excellent programs in History and Anthropology remain distinct and we can continue to write new chapters in our department’s 121 year-long history at Catholic University. Even more, we will profit enormously from the synergy this merger of two closely related academic disciplines which have been inspiring each other for a long time. As the first chair of this new department, I am looking forward to an exciting future of mutual inspiration and cooperation.
We owe a significant debt of gratitude to my predecessors in History, Laura Mayhall and Larry Poos (interim chair in 2024), and Joshua Samuels, who led the Department of Anthropology. Thanks to their enormous skill and careful governance, our department and both programs are vibrant and exceptionally well-prepared for the opportunities that lie ahead.
Photo: History Majors Career Event, February 2025. An alumni panel discusses their career paths before speed networking with students in small groups. We are so grateful to our BA alumni for their participation!
The excellent standing of our History program has been demonstrated, as in the past, by the numerous extraordinary achievements of our faculty, graduate and undergraduate students in the past academic year. I can only mention the most important ones here.
Dr. Katherine L. Jansen, Research Ordinary Professor, is among the 198 individuals from 53 different disciplines awarded Guggenheim Fellowships for 2025, which is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the program. As Research Ordinary Professor, she has turned her attention away from teaching and is now working on a new book on Relics of Rome. A story about Dr. Jansen's award can be read here:
Dr. Thomas Cohen, who directed the University’s Oliveira Lima Library and who has been on the department’s faculty since 1990, is now a Research Associate Professor, so he can focus more of his time on his research. Dr. Laura Nym Mayhall, who has been in our department for more than two decades, has also changed her status to Research Associate Professor. She is currently working on two projects: a book entitled Aristocracy and Celebrity in Britain, 1880-1950, under contract with Oxford University Press, and Suffrage in the British Empire, 1760-1960, a five-volume set of documents with editorial commentary under contract with Routledge (London).
Dr. Michael Kimmage is continuing his research on U.S.-Ukrainian relations, and is currently a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington for the academic year 2025-26.
Dr. David Rich, a Research Associate, who worked on war crimes in the Department of Justice while teaching courses on the Holocaust for our department, has co-edited a new documentary history of a chapter in Hungary’s participation in the Holocaust (see Faculty Book Highlights for 2025, elsewhere in this issue of Connections).
However, we also have to report a loss. We mourn the passing of our long serving, beloved colleague Uta Renate Blumenthal (1935-2025). Uta was one of the most famous specialists of medieval papacy. She taught at our department from 1979 to 2007. An appreciation of her life and career can be found here.
Our graduate students have again demonstrated their excellence among their peers. Mikkaela Bailey (ABD doctoral candidate in medieval history) has been granted a 2025 Schallek Award, jointly bestowed by the Medieval Academy of America (the most distinguished scholarly organization in North America supporting medieval studies) and the Richard III Society. Michaela Granger (Ph.D. 2024), has been appointed professor of history (tenure track) at Raritan Valley Community College in Branchburg, NJ, and received an award from the Hagiographical Studies Travel Award for 2025. Another alumnus, Austin Powell (Ph.D. 2020), has received a tenure-track assistant professorship of history at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. PhD student Amos Bronner, was awarded a prestigious fellowship by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to study for an entire year in Vienna, Austria. Two other students of our PhD program, Jonathan Dell’Isola and Wes Bush defended their dissertations in 2025.
Photo: History Club meeting, September 2025.
Our undergraduates also continue to impress us with their accomplishments.
Two outstanding seniors presented papers at the national convention of Phi Alpha Theta (the national honor society for history) in Arlington, Virginia on January 2-5, 2025, Chloe Masaitis (double major in History and Global Studies) presented a paper on Hawaiian history while Katherine Mackenzie (a double major in History and Music) presented her paper “It’s a Long, Long Way to Tipperary: Popular Song as a Cultural Artifact of the Great War”. On this year’s University Research Day (April 2, 2025), three history majors presented papers or posters: Catherine Darcy, Sarah Friedman and Chloe Masaitis. Chloe won the prize for best oral presentation by an undergraduate, and later received the Monsignor Campbell Award, the highest undergraduate academic honor awarded by the university, and a Fulbright scholarship to spend 2025-2026 in Taiwan.
In the last couple of years, we have reviewed our undergraduate program which we are strengthening with a few new initiatives, including a new cornerstone course, HIST 101 (see the article about this elsewhere in this issue of Connections). This new course, “Encountering the Past”, is not only helping each new freshman to learn how to best navigate our program by learning the necessary concepts of our profession as well as skills and essential competencies, it is also turning them into members of a community for the next four years.
Last but not least, I want to express my deep gratitude for the generous support of you, our alumni, that has underwritten numerous exciting activities of our students, especially our fantastic History Club which has now more than 85 members and continues to attract, inform and entertain students from all parts of the campus. Your support will also enable us to continue our History Major Career Nights, a most successful event which brings together students and alumni.
As always, we want to hear from you! Please take a moment to write to us and let us know about your news and accomplishments – we love to know more about where your history degrees have taken you. You can email us at history-dept@cua.edu .
Sincerely,
Arpad von Klimo