Theodora Dragostinova
Assistant Professor
Modern European History

Theodora Dragostinova received her B.A. in History and Archaeology from the University of Athens, Greece (1998), her M.A. in History from the University of Florida (2000), and her Ph.D. in History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2005). Dr. Dragostinova joined the Department of History in 2007 as an Assistant Professor of Eastern European history. Her work focuses on nation-building, refugee movements, and minority politics in Eastern Europe, with a particular emphasis on the Balkans. Dr. Dragostinova is completing a book manuscript entitled "Between Two Motherlands: Nation... (read more about Theodora Dragostinova)

Tryntje Helfferich
Assistant Professor (Lima)
Early Modern European History

Tryntje Helfferich received her M.A. from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and her Ph.D. in early modern European history from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She studies central Europe during the period of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), with a particular focus on the diplomatic, military, and religious history of the time. She is currently finishing a book on the German princess Amalia Elisabeth of Hesse-Cassel, and will also soon be coming out with a source book on the Thirty Years War.... (read more about Tryntje Helfferich)

Christopher Otter
Assistant Professor
Modern European History

Professor Otter received his BA from the University of Oxford in 1991, his MA from the University of Exeter in 1996, and his PhD from the University of Manchester in 2002. Professor Otter's research interests include the history of technology, the history of food and nutrition, and environmental history. His area of geographical focus is Europe, particularly Britain, from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. He has published articles in Social History, the Journal of British Studies, Cultural Geographies, Food and History and Cultural Studies. His first book, "The Victorian E... (read more about Christopher Otter)

Kristina Sessa
Assistant Professor
Ancient History

Kristina Sessa received her A.B. in Religion from Princeton University (1992) and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Ancient and Medieval History from the University of California at Berkeley (2003). Her research focuses on the history of late antique religions and society (ca. 300-700 CE), especially on the intersection between classical Roman culture and early Christianity. She recently edited a special volume of the Journal of Early Christian Studies on Christianity and the domestic sphere, and is presently writing a book on the relationship between the aristocratic household and the emergence of episco... (read more about Kristina Sessa)

Lilia Fernandez
Assistant Professor
U.S. History

Dr. Lilia Fernandez earned a B.A. in Government from Harvard University, a Master's degree in Educational Policy Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego. Professor Fernandez’s research interests include Latino/a immigration history, race and ethnic identity formation, women’s history, and urban renewal and gentrification. Her current book project examines Mexican and Puerto Rican migration and community formation in Chicago from 1945 to 1980. Professor Fernandez has been awarded vario... (read more about Lilia Fernandez)

Daniel Hobbins
Assistant Professor
European History

MA (1998), PhD (2002) University of Notre Dame; LMS (2005) University of Toronto.

Daniel Hobbins researches and teaches the history of medieval Europe from 500-1500. His specific interests include the cultural and intellectual history of northwestern Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with special emphasis on universities, written culture, the Hundred Years' War, Jean Gerson, and Joan of Arc. His article “The Schoolman as Public Intellectual: Jean Gerson and the Late Medieval Tract,” which appeared in The American Historical Review 108 (2003): 1308-37, received the ... (read more about Daniel Hobbins)

Ousman Kobo
Assistant Professor
African History

BA (Honors) City College of New York (1992); MA (International Relations), City College of New York (1995) and Ph.D. (History), University of Wisconsin-Madison (2005). Professor Kobo has served as Visiting Assistant Professor of African history at Marquette University and Gettysburg College before joining the History Department in 2006. Professor Kobo’s research and teaching interests include 20th century West African social and religious history as well as the social history of West African migrants in the United States. His dissertation, “Promoting the Good and Forbidding the Evil: A C... (read more about Ousman Kobo)

Derek Heng
(Marion)
Assistant Professor
Asian History

Derek Heng obtained his MA from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (1997), and his PhD from the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hull (2005). The MA thesis was entitled Temasik: Reconstruction of a Classical Period Malay Trading Port Polity, which sought to hypothetically reconstruct the spatial features of the fourteenth century port-polity on Singapore through the integrative use of colonial accounts, such Malay historical traditions as the Sejarah Malayu, archaeological data, and present-day academic works on the spatial layout of pre-modern co... (read more about Derek Heng)

Margaret Sumner (Marion)
Assistant Professor
U.S. History

Ph.D. Rutgers University, 2006. Research and teaching interests include early American history and women's history. Dissertation: “Reason, Revelation and Romance: The Social and Intellectual Construction of Early American College Communities, 1782-1860.”... (read more about Margaret Sumner)

Greg Anderson
Assistant Professor
Ancient History

Kate Haulman
Assistant Professor
Early American History

Kate Haulman received her Ph.D. in history from Cornell University in 2002, concentrating in early American history. Her current book project, “Political Modes: The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America,” represents her engagement with cultural history, women’s/gender studies and material and visual culture, both in scholarship and the classroom. Considering fashion both as a concept and a changing array of styles that adorned the body, Political Modes demonstrates that fashion’s cultural politics—in particular its power to perform and yet undermine systems of hierarchy and cate... (read more about Kate Haulman)

Robert McMahon
Professor
Diplomatic History

Mytheli Sreenivas
Assistant Professor

Stanley Blake (Lima)
Assistant Professor
Latin American History

Stanley “Chip” Blake joined the department of history in 2004 as an assistant professor. He has taught previously at the University of Chicago, the University of New England, Bowdoin College, and Colby College. He received his Ph.D. in history from the State University of New York in 2001 and specializes in modern Brazilian and Latin American history. Dr. Blake’s research interests include race and national identity in Latin America, Latin American social and political history, and the history of medicine and public health in the Americas. He is currently at work on a manuscript based on h... (read more about Stanley Blake)

Alice Conklin
Associate Professor
Modern European History

I am an historian of Modern France, with a particular interest in French colonialism under the Third Republic. Since being awarded my Ph.D from Princeton (1989) I have published A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930 (Stanford 1997 and Berkshire Prize winner 1998), and several related articles. I am currently at work on a new book project, tentatively entitled "In the Museum of Man: Ethnographic Liberalism in Paris, 1920-1950." It is a cultural, political and intellectual history of French anthropology as it moved from a primary emphasis o... (read more about Alice Conklin)

Alan Gallay
Professor
Early American History

James Genova (Marion)
Assistant Professor
African History

Dr. Genova received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 2000 where his dissertation won awards including The President's Award to Distinguished Doctoral Students (Best Dissertation). He was an Assistant Professor at Indiana State University and a visiting Senior Lecturer in African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University before joining the faculty in the History Department at OSU. Genova is the author of Colonial Ambivalence, Cultural Authenticity, and the Limitations of Mimicry in French-Ruled West Africa, 1914-1956 (Peter Lang, 2004), and sever... (read more about James Genova)

Harvey Graff
Professor
European and U.S. History

Harvey J. Graff is Ohio Eminent Scholar in Literacy Studies and Professor of English and History at The Ohio State University. (PhD.,University of Toronto.) He joined OSU in 2004, and is developing the Literacy Studies @ OSU initiative. Previously, he was Professor of History at the University of Texas at San Antonio. In 1999-2000, Graff served as President of the Social Science History Association. In 2001, the University of Linköping in Sweden awarded him the Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa for his contributions to scholarship.

A comparative social historian, Graff is noted internat... (read more about Harvey Graff)

Hasan Jeffries
Assistant Professor
African-American History

Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries joined the history department in autumn 2003. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Dr. Jeffries received his B.A. in history from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia in 1994, his M.A. in American history from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina in 1997, and his Ph.D. in twentieth century American history from Duke University in 2002. Dr. Jeffries specializes in twentieth century African American history and has an expertise in the Civil Rights Movement and post World War II African American protest. His current book project investigates the Black Freedom Struggle in... (read more about Hasan Jeffries)

Jennifer Siegel
Assistant Professor
Modern European History

Jennifer Siegel joined the OSU Department of History in the fall of 2003. She received her B.A. and her Ph.D. from Yale University, the latter in 1998. A recipient of a number of prestigious fellowships, including an Olin Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Mellon Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, Dr. Siegel specializes in modern European diplomatic and military history, with a focus on the British and Russian Empires. She is the author of Endgame: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia (I.B. Tauris, 2002), which won the 2003 AAASS Barbara Jelavich Prize. She has published article... (read more about Jennifer Siegel)

Stephanie Smith
Assistant Professor
Latin American History

Dr. Stephanie Smith joined the Department of History in 2003 as an Assistant Professor. She received her PhD in History from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in August 2002, where she concentrated on Latin American History, and specifically Mexico. Currently Dr. Smith is working on a book project entitled "Engendering the Revolution: Women and State Formation in Yucatán, Mexico, 1872-1930.” This work explores the complicated process of women's involvement in nation-state formation, and further examines women's local negotiations with revolutionary courts and regional agencies, a... (read more about Stephanie Smith)

Alcira Dueñas (Newark)
Assistant Professor

Dr. Alcira Dueñas is an international scholar teaching at the OSU Newark campus, and joined the Department of History in 2003 as an Assistant Professor. She taught for twenty years a variety of undergraduate courses in Latin American History in Colombia, and, since 1996, in the United States. She first came to the United States as a Fulbright scholar to conduct her graduate studies. A specialist in Latin American History, Colonial Latin American literature and Women’s history, Dr. Dueñas's teaching and research interests include the history of colonialism and post colonialism in Latin America ... (read more about Alcira Dueñas)

Mollie Cavender (Mansfield)
Assistant Professor
Russian History

M.W.Cavender; Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1997. Professor Cavender is a specialist in Russian history, with interests in 18th- and 19th-century Russian cultural, social and intellectual history. Most recently, she has published Nests of the Gentry: Family, Estate and Local Loyalties in Provincial Russia (University of Delaware Press, 2007), and "'Kind Angel of the Soul and Heart': Domesticity and Family Correspondence among the Pre-Emancipation Russian Gentry" in The Russian Review (2002).... (read more about Mollie Cavender)