First Books by Contemporary History Institute Alumni

The following are first books written by Ohio University alumni who studied with the Contemporary History Institute and earned its graduate certificate.

  • Aaron Brown (Ph.D. 2021), The 1970s and the Making of the Modern US-Mexico Border: Fortifying a Frontier (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2024). Dr. Brown is an independent historian.
  • Luke Griffith (Ph.D. 2018), Unraveling the Gray Area Problem: The United States and the INF Treaty (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023). Dr. Griffith teaches at New Mexico Junior College
  • David Prentice (Ph.D. 2013), Unwilling to Quit: The Long Unwinding of American Involvement in Vietnam (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2023). Dr. Prentice is a historian and editor at Oklahoma State University.
  • Alexander G. Lovelace (Ph.D. 2020), The Media Offensive: How the Press and Public Opinion Shaped Allied Strategy during World War II (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2022). Dr. Lovelace is a scholar in residence at the Contemporary History Institute.
  • Sarah M. Iler (M.A. 2010), co-written with Bruce A. Kimball, Wealth, Cost, and Price in American Higher Education: A Brief History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023). Dr. Iler (Ph.D., Ohio State University) teaches for Columbus State Community College.
  • Gerald F. Goodwin (Ph.D. 2014), Race in the Crucible of War: African American Servicemen and the War in Vietnam (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2023). Dr. Goodwin teaches for Le Moyne College.
  • Steven T. Wills (Ph.D. 2017), Strategy Shelved: The Collapse of Cold War Naval Strategic Planning (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2021). Dr. Wills works as a research analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses.
  • Sebastian Hurtado-Torres (Ph.D. 2016), The Gathering Storm: Eduardo Frei’s Revolution in Liberty and Chile’s Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020). Dr. Hurtado-Torres teaches at Universidad Austral de Chile.
  • Kirk Tyvela (Ph.D. 2007), The Dictator Dilemma: The United States and Paraguay in the Cold War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019). Dr. Tyela teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Washington County.
  • Richard Garlitz (Ph.D.2008), A Mission for Development: Utah Universities and the Point Four Program in Iran (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2018). Dr. Garlitz teaches at the University of Tennessee-Martin.
  • Kevin E. Grimm (Ph.D. 2012), America Enters the Cold War: The Road to Global Commitment (New York: Routledge, 2018). Dr. Grimm teaches at Regent University.
  • William Knoblauch (Ph.D. 2012), Nuclear Freeze in a Cold War: The Reagan Administration, Cultural Activism, and the End of the Arms Race (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2017). Dr. Knoblauch teaches at Finlandia University.
  • Leslie A. Hadfield (M.A. 2005), Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2016). Dr. Hadfield (Ph.D., Michigan State) teaches at Brigham Young University.
  • Joseph L. Venosa (Ph.D. 2011), Paths toward the Nation: Islam, Community, and Early Nationalist Mobilization in Eritrea, 1941-1961 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014). Dr. Venosa teaches at Salisbury University.
  • Neal Rosendorf (MA, 1991), Franco Sells Spain to America: Hollywood, Tourism, and Public Relations as Postwar Spanish Soft Power (New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2014). Dr. Rosendorf (Ph.D., Harvard) teaches at New Mexico State University.
  • Pearl T. Ponce (MA, 1992), “To Govern the Devil in Hell”: The Political Crisis in Territorial Kansas. Normal: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014. Dr. Ponce (Ph.D., Harvard) teaches at Ithaca College.
  • Jeffrey Bloodworth (Ph.D. 2006), Losing the Center: The Decline of American Liberalism, 1968-1992 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2013). Dr. Bloodworth teaches at Gannon University.
  • Richard Dodgson (Ph.D. 2006), It’s All a Kind of Magic: The Young Ken Kesey (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013). Dr. Dodgson teaches at Lakeland University.
  • James Waite (Ph. D. 2005), The End of the First Indochina War: A Global History (New York: Routledge, 2012). Dr. Waite is a career diplomat in New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
  • Christian Peterson (Ph.D. 2009), Globalizing Human Rights: Private Citizens, the Soviet Union, and the West (New York: Routledge, 2011). Dr. Peterson teaches at Ferris State University.
  • Christina Morina (M.A. 2002), Legacies of Stalingrad: Remembering the Eastern Front War in Germany since 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Dr. Morina is the DAAD visiting assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam.
  • Carie Pitzulo (MA, 2001), Bachelors and Bunnies: The Sexual Politics of Playboy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). Dr. Pitzulo (Ph.D., City University of New York) teaches at Colorado State University.
  • Mark Benbow (Ph.D. 1999), Leading them to the Promised Land: Woodrow Wilson, Covenant Theology, and the Mexican Revolution, 1913-1915 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2010). Dr. Benbow teaches at Marymount University.
  • Thomas A. Bruscino (Ph.D. 2002), A Nation Forged in War: How World War II Taught Americans to Get Along (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2010). Dr. Bruscino teaches at the Army War College.
  • Daniel R. Reimold (Ph.D. 2008) Sex and the University: Celebrity, Controversy, and a Student Journalism Revolution, 1997-2008 (Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010). Dr. Reimold taught at Saint Joseph’s University. He passed away in 2015.
  • Carolyn Herbst Lewis (M.A. 2001), Prescriptions of Heterosexuality: Sexual Citizenship in the Cold War Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). Dr. Herbst Lewis (Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara) teaches at Grinnell College.
  • Kimberly Little (Ph.D., 2004), “You Must Be From the North”: Southern White Women in the Memphis Civil Rights Movement (Oxford: University of Mississippi Press, 2009). Dr. Little teaches at Ohio University.
  • Derek Catsam (Ph.D. 2003), Freedom’s Main Line: The Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides (Lexington:  University Press of Kentucky, 2009). Dr. Catsam teaches at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin and is Senior Research Associate at Rhodes University in South Africa.
  • Marc J. Selverstone (Ph.D. 2000), Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945-1950 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009). Dr. Selverstone is the Chair of the Miller Center’s Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia.
  • Robert T. Davis (Ph.D. 2006), The Challenge of Adaptation: The U.S. Army in the Aftermath of Conflict, 1953-1990 (Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2008). Dr. Davis teaches at the Army Command and General Staff College.
  • Lorenz M. Lüthi (M.A. 1998), The Sino-Soviet Split, 1956-1966: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). 2008 Furniss Award and 2010 Marshall Shulman Book Prize. Dr. Lüthi (Ph.D., Yale) teaches at McGill University.
  • Claudia Weber (MA, 1998), Auf der Suche nach der Nation. Erinnerungskultur in Bulgarien 1878-1944 (Berlin: Lit-Verlag, 2006). Dr. Weber (Ph.D., Leipzig) teaches at Europa University Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder.
  • T. David Curp (MA, 1991), A Clean Sweep: The Politics of Ethnic Cleansing in Western Poland, 1945-1960 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2006). Dr. Curp (Ph.D., Washington) teaches at Ohio University.
  • Alicia P. Long (MA, 1991), The Great Southern Babylon: Sex, Race, and Respectability in New Orleans, 1865-1920 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005). Dr. Long (Ph.D., Delaware) teaches at Louisiana State University.
  • Jeffrey Woods (Ph.D. 2000) Black Struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and Anticommunism in the South, 1948-1968 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004). Dr. Woods teaches at Arkansas Tech University.
  • Paul Chastko (Ph.D. 2002) Developing Alberta's Oil Sands (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2004). Dr. Chastko teaches at the University of Calgary.
  • Philippe Girard (Ph.D. 2002) Clinton in Haiti: The 1994 US Intervention in Haiti (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Dr. Girard teaches at McNeese University.
  • Jeffrey McIllwain (M.A., 1994), Organizing Crime in Chinatown: Race and Racketeering in New York City, 1890-1910 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004). Dr. McIlwain teaches at San Diego State University.
  • Philip Catton (Ph.D. 1998) Diem's Final Failure: Prelude to America's War in Vietnam. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003). Dr. Catton teaches at Stephen F. Austin University.
  • Jeffrey Coker (Ph.D. 1999) Love's Labor Lost: Left Intellectuals, Labor, and the Proletarian Myth Since the Great Depression (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003). Dr. Coker is the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Shenandoah University.
  • Kevin O’Connor (Ph.D., 2000), The History of the Baltic States (Westport: Greenwood, 2003). Dr. O’Connor teaches at Gonzaga University.
  • Jeremi Suri (M.A. 1996), Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003). Dr. Suri (Ph.D., Yale) holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
  • Steven P. Remy (Ph.D. 2000) The Heidelberg Myth: The Nazification and Denazification of a German University, 1933-1957 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). Dr. Remy teaches at the City University of New York.
  • Michael S. Sweeney (Ph.D. 1996) Secrets of Victory: The Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). Dr. Sweeney teaches at Ohio University.
  • Victor Scott Kaufman (Ph.D. 1998) Confronting Communism: U.S. and British Policies Toward China (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001). Dr. Kaufman teaches at Francis Marion University, where he is the History Department Chair.
  • Alessandro Brogi (Ph.D. 1998) A Question of Self-Esteem: The United States and the Cold War Choices in France and Italy, 1944-1958 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001). Dr. Brogi teaches at the University of Arkansas.
  • Raymond J. Haberski (Ph.D. 1999) It’s Only a Movie!: Films and Critics in American Culture (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001). Dr. Haberski teaches at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
  • Michael R. Hall (Ph.D. 1996) Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Trujillos (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000). Dr. Hall teaches at Armstrong State University.
  • Gregory L. Schneider (M.A. 1992), Cadres for Conservatism: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of the Contemporary Right (New York: New York University Press, 1999). Dr. Schneider (Ph.D., Illinois Chicago) teaches at Emporia State University.
  • H. Campbell Craig (Ph.D. 1995) Destroying the Village: Eisenhower and Thermonuclear War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). Dr. Craig teaches at Cardiff University.
  • Steven R. Taaffe (Ph.D. 1995) MacArthur’s Jungle War: The 1944 New Guinea Campaign (Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 1998). Featured Selection, History Book Club, 1998. Dr. Taaffe teaches at Stephen F. Austin University.
  • Philip Nash (Ph.D. 1994) The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters, 1957-1963 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997). Dr. Nash teaches at Pennsylvania State University at Shenango.
  • Qianq Zhai (Ph.D. 1991), The Dragon, the Lion, and the Eagle: Chinese-British-American Relations, 1949-1958 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1994). Dr. Zhai teaches at Auburn University Montgomery.
  • Shu Guang Zhang (Ph.D. 1990) Deterrence and Strategic Culture: Chinese-American Confrontations, 1949-1958 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992). Dr. Zhang is President of the City University of Macau.