Dear Alumni, Students, Colleagues, and Friends,
I hope all of you are enjoying a wonderful start to the summer. Over the past academic year of 2025-2026, the students, staff, and faculty in the History Department have had great accomplishments in bringing our critical engagement with past and present in our classrooms, our research, and our community.
We deeply value student-centered learning. Every year, dozens of our students learn ‘applied history,’ leaving the classroom and engaging with history as it evolves out in the world. From internships in local museums to archaeological digs in New Mexico, to confronting the painful past of the site of our campus, our hands-on learning gives students an opportunity to see communities as an open book. Ronnie Karanja, an undergraduate researcher, found one example of how history is embedded in the things we take for granted. As a research assistant for Professor Rachel Gross, he researched the fascinating history of Army-Navy stores in the postwar US, interviewing several owners. In so doing, he retrieved a fascinating story that connects the history of US consumerism back to broader geopolitical and global processes.
We are also proud of our students’ accomplishments as they build their careers. Indira Saha, recipient of the 2025 Outstanding Graduate Student award from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has applied her skills in community engagement and archival research in a new position at History Colorado. As part of the Portrait of Colorado at 150 Storytelling Initiative, she has documented and shared lived experiences of people across our state. Another recent graduate, Samantha Martinelli, has obtained a position at the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island as a Collections Care and Research Specialist. While an MA student, she gained museum experience by volunteering for the Black American West Museum and interning for History Colorado.
We also celebrate the great achievements of our faculty. History is alive because it is under constant revision, and the research we do – as students, faculty, and community – recovers what has been forgotten or silenced, and it challenges narratives that so often serve other interests. Among our faculty’s conference presentations, published articles, and community work, this year two colleagues published books that challenge the assumed narratives of their fields. Professor Dale Stahl’s book, Two Rivers Entangled: An Ecological History of the Tigris and Euphrates in the Twentieth Century (Stanford, 2026), retells the story of Iraq through the lens of its environment and the engineers who sought to shape it. The result is a history that fully situates Iraq as a place, and as an environment, that profoundly shaped society and politics. Meanwhile, Professor Emerita Pamela Laird published her book, Self-Made: The Stories that Forged an American Myth, which holds up a mirror to the cult of individualism and “success” in US society. Her history of one of the most enduring myths in US culture, that of the “self-made man,” challenges us to reconsider one of the most powerful and recurring tropes in our politics, society, and culture.
To our alumni, our current students, and our faculty authors, many congratulations for your great work. And above all, we extend our warmest congratulations and best wishes to all our graduating MA and BA students. Know that we are here to support you as you move forward!
All best wishes,
Ryan Crewe
Associate Professor and Chair