1950s |1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |  2020s

1950s

Michael Finley (BA ‘58) - As the chaos in DC continues to grow, I am grateful for being able to see it in a long-term perspective. Some of my adult children don’t have much of that view. Let’s hope that my sense that “this too shall pass” actually prevails. Soon I hope.

1960s

Frank Conlon (BA ‘60) - Frank Conlon, Professor emeritus of History, South Asian Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Washington, received the Distinguished Long-Term Service Award of the South Asian Studies Association of Australia.

Judith Westlund (BA ‘63) - Judith Westlund Rosbe received the Mass Alliance Star Award in 2024 for making a lasting impact on the local history of Marion, Massachusetts. She authored six books on Marion history published by Arcadia Publishing Company. She was on the board of Marion’s historical society for over 45 years, as well as its president and treasurer.

Gary Werskey (BA ‘65) - Following the publication in 2021 of my Picturing a Nation: The Art & Life of A. H. Fullwood, I've spread my wings by reviewing books well beyond my academic specialties for a lively online Australian newsletter (insidestory.org.au), including works on French impressionism, globalization, and contemporary American politics. In a way I'm paying homage to the NU historians Robert Wiebe, George Romani, and Richard Leopold, who really opened up the world to me 60 years ago and inspired my subsequent career.

B.  Wyckoff (BA ‘66) - Bette Jane Wyckoff (BA ’66; MA History, University of Illinois ’67; MA Education, California State University Los Angeles '76) is a member of the North American Snowsports Journalists Association and is currently serving on the International Snow Sports Museums’ association committee for the International Skiing History Association. She is the History Committee chair for the Far West Ski Association (FWSA), an organization of over 140 ski clubs in 12 western states. Jane was one of the founders of the Far West Skier’s Guide and a featured writer for the annual magazine, now on its 38th edition. She was the managing editor for The Far West Ski Association Turns 90 and co-editor of A History of the Single Ski Club of Los Angeles, the club’s 50th Anniversary booklet. She is a recipient of the FWSA Bill Berry Award--Hard News and Western Ski Heritage Award. As Vice President of the Far West Ski Foundation, she is active in one of its key missions, “Preserving the Legacy,” through snowsports research, publications, educational media, and social media, in addition to supporting museums, libraries and cultural centers that display and secure storage of memorabilia.

1970s

William Levin (BA ‘70) - I last reported my comings and goings in 2021, and not too much has changed since then. I graduated from NU with a history major in 1970 and earned MA and PhD degrees in the history of art at the University of Michigan in 1973 and 1983. While researching my dissertation in Florence, Italy, from 1976 to 1981, I taught Italian art history for an American semester-abroad program. I then taught at Mankato State University in Southern Minnesota (now Minnesota State University-Mankato) from 1983 to 1986, and at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, from 1986 until my retirement in 2010. I remain active in my academic field, late-medieval Italian painting and sculpture in its historical and social context, publishing my research in professional journals and speaking often at academic conferences. My wife, a native Florentine and semi-retired clinical psychologist, and I still live in Danville. We continue to enjoy seeing the world! One daughter resides in Telluride, Colorado; her older sister, a victim of homicide, died in 2007.

John Reiger (PhD ‘70) - John Reiger recently donated the remaining items in his George Bird Grinnell collection to Yale, so his wife wouldn't have to deal with requests for them after he's gone. Photographs that have appeared in Ken Burns' documentaries and companion volumes on the national parks and the American buffalo, and books or essays by Douglas Brinkley, John Taliaferro, and Reiger went to Beinecke, where, in 1984, he had donated the thousands of copied, outgoing Grinnell letters he had discovered in 1967. Eight study skins collected by Grinnell or his brother in the 1870s, whose colors are as bright as if the birds had been shot last week, went to the Peabody Museum. One of these, a male towhee, was collected by Grinnell on June 15, 1874, when he was the naturalist on the Custer expedition to the Black Hills, and the attached tag reads: “Ft. a Lincoln Geo. Bird Grinnell.” It was from Fort Lincoln, two years later, that Custer's command headed out on its way to the Little Bighorn.

Terrence Witowksi (BA ‘70) - As Professor Emeritus of Marketing (California State University, Long Beach), I have continued to publish articles, chapters, and book reviews on marketing and consumption history with an emphasis on firearms, toy guns, and visual data sources. You can find them in the Journal of Macromarketing, the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, and other publications.

I have also been presenting one or two papers a year at conferences. This gets a bit expensive when no longer supported by one’s university, but I need to get out of the house more. Last October I gave a talk on “Toy Guns and Social Unease in American History” at a conference on Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Guns and Society at Wesleyan University. The older I get, the more of an historian I become!

Arthur Flicker (BA ‘71) - I am now semi-retired, serving as the chaplain for the Jewish Care Program and teaching Sunday School. Go Cats!

Jeff Rice (BA ‘72) - I am continuing (despite my official retirement) to teach in our Political Science Department (contemporary history apparently belongs in Pol Sci) as well as in the Northwestern Prison Education Program. NPEP is an amazing effort on the part of the university to provide earned degrees to the incarcerated. Some of my best teaching and learning moments have come in these classes. Check the program out. My Evanston students are very motivated and I love teaching them. Many remind me of my fellow students from my undergraduate days.  Deering Meadow is alive and well with life outside the classroom. On a personal note, I have two wee granddaughters and love living in Galena, Illinois, where there are more coffee houses than traffic lights.

Don H. Doyle (Ph.D. ’73) - Don Doyle retired after nearly 50 years of teaching at the University of South Carolina, Vanderbilt University, University of Michigan-Dearborn, with visiting appointments at the University of Genova, University of Rome, Leeds University, Catholic University Rio de Janeiro, and University of Toulouse. He lives in Folly Beach, near Charleston, SC, and enjoys a stimulating circle of friends, fishing, boating, and writing when the mood strikes. Princeton University Press recently published The Age of Reconstruction: How Lincoln’s New Birth of Freedom Remade the World, a sequel to The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War. He is busy giving book talks in several places featured in these books: Paris, Cambridge, Manchester, and Rome. At 79, he looks forward to more.

David Gaynon (BA ‘73) - I am in my third year as the curriculum chair of the Senior Studies Institute, a group that provides its members with 90 lectures per year plus a host of other programs including play reading, current affairs discussion, poetry, and several book clubs. In the last year, I delivered a lecture on Frank Oppenheimer, the kid brother of JR, who in his time checked boxes next to physicist, communist party member, fired college professor, cattle rancher, rural high school science teacher, and museum founder.

Kathleen Sheldon (BA ‘74) - My most recent book is The Mackerel Years: A Memoir of War, Hunger, and Women's History in 1980s Mozambique (Africa World Press, 2024), and it includes a few pages about my time at NU. For more about my career and academic publications on African women's history and Mozambique, check out my webpage. In personal news, Steve Tarzynski and I met during our first year at NU in 1971, and we recently celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. We are enjoying time with our 2 children and 5 grandchildren.

Susan Clausen (BA ‘75) - I spent my 40+ year working life building a career as an independent Institutional Financial Advisor and Investment Fiduciary specialist. In retirement, I have the joy of spending time with my 3 children and 4 grandchildren. I’ve taken on loads of satisfying home projects and have taken on a number of new crafting skills. I live in Michigan now and look forward to exploring all the beautiful shores and towns.

Timothy Walch (PhD ‘75) - Timothy Walch is the former director of the Hoover Library. The board of trustees of the State Historical Society of Iowa (SHSI) presented the 2024 William J Petersen and Edgar R. Harlan Award for Lifetime Achievement to Timothy Walch, the former director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library – Museum in West Branch. The award recognizes significant and sustained contributions to Iowa history by an individual, organization, or institution. It is named for two long-time leaders of the Society.

Barbara Posadas (PhD ‘76) - Barbara Posadas is CLAS Distinguished Professor of History Emerita at Northern Illinois University where she taught from 1974 to 2015. Her most recent publication is “Growing Up as Bridge Generation Members: Two Daughters in Chicago,” Filipino American National Historical Society Journal (2024). The invited, semi-autobiographical article is a companion piece to “Hmm, You Don’t Look Polish,” Polish American Studies (Autumn 2017). She continues to serve on the editorial boards of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society and the Journal of American Ethnic History. She and Roland L. Guyotte (PhD 1980), her husband of forty-three years, reside in DeKalb, IL, and Morris, MN.

Cheryl Johnson Odim (PhD ‘78) - Cheryl Johnson Odim is co-editor (one of seven) of The Oxford Handbook of W. E. B. Du Bois (Oxford University Press, 2024).

1980s

Roland Guyotte (PhD ‘80) - Roland Guyotte continues as Professor of History and All-University Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris. He reviewed P. James Paligutan’s, Lured by the American Dream (2022), in The Journal of American History (June 2024). At UMM, where he has taught since fall 1969, his most recent course offerings have been “The American West,” “The Civil War and Reconstruction,” “The U.S. Presidency: 1900-Present,” and “The Senior Seminar.”  In Spring 2025, he signed a Phased Retorement Agreement.

Jim Sanders (BA ‘80) - My poetry chapbook, Connections (Johnstown, PA: Prolific Press, Inc., 2025) hit the streets in March. An Episcopal priest commented that one poem made real to him the ordeal of DC Beltway commuting. Another poem nourishes my desire to know my neighbors better, he said. Inspired by Johannes Rutinger's Commentationes (1529-1539), and Carla Roth's analysis of it (See, The Talk of the Town, OUP, 2022), a friend and I are attempting a similar project in which we record and compile daily conversations and letter extracts. New light on the 'grassroots' is emerging.

Joyce Sauter (BA ‘82) - Joyce Sauter, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, operates a private mental health therapy practice in Houston, Texas. She and Syed Zafar authored Crossing Cultures with Grace and Humor. Joyce remains very grateful to her History professors at NU for teaching her writing and critical thinking skills that serve her to this day.

Daniel Sack (BA ‘84) - I am still the deputy director of the Division of Research Programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities. My work has changed a lot since the recent restructuring of the NEH (and the rest of the government), but I remain committed to public service and connecting the American people with the humanities.

1990s

Lawrence Weinberg (BA ‘91) - Lawrence Weinberg Lives in France with his wife, two dogs, six cats, and six sheep.

 Liza Zimmerman (PhD ‘91) - Liza B. Zimmerman just moved to Miami and is thrilled to continue covering food and wine from her new tropical town. She is also continuing to grow her wine-focused events for team building with locals in various professions.

 John Curry (BA ‘92) - John Curry was awarded the prestigious UNLV Catherine Gullo Bellver Award for research in Turkey for the summer of 2025. This will include a presentation at a workshop, Translation and Multilingualism in Mongol and Post-Mongol Eurasia, at the University of Munster in Germany. He was also promoted to full professor in the Department of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which will become effective in July of 2025.

Michelle Feder (BA ‘93) - Michelle Feder is a private tutor of the humanities and writing process, including college application essays. You can find her at www.bymichellefeder.com.

Mark Bazer (BA ‘95) - The Interview Show (theinterviewshowchicago.com), the long-running live talk show I host and produce, is now a podcast. Our first episode featured an interview with Tony-winning actor Robert Sean Leonard (House, Dead Poets Society and now, at the Goodman Theatre, Betrayal. We recently did a live taping at FitzGerald's, in Berwyn, in partnership with Chicago Humanities. It featured Booker Prize-winning novelist Samantha Harvey, New York Times reporter Jonathan Weisman, and jazz artist Frank Catalano

Stephen Caropreso (BA ‘95) - I am finishing my 28th year in elementary education, mostly in Chicago Public Schools. Currently I am the assistant principal at Palmer Elementary School in Chicago. After graduating in 1995, I went to the University of Iowa and got my MA in Educational Administration. Soon after, I returned to Chicago and began my career. I have a wonderful family, and we enjoy going to all Northwestern athletic events.

Rebecca Shumway (BA ‘95) - Rebecca Shumway supervised her first PhD student in History as a member of the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is completing a term as the Director of Graduate Studies in the History Department.

Wayne Bowen (PhD ‘96) - Wayne Bowen is Professor of History and interim dean for the College of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Central Florida. His tenth book, The History of Saudi Arabia, 3rd edition, was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2024. His eleventh, Working for Nazi Germany: Salvador Merino and Spanish Labor in the Third Reich, is forthcoming from Routledge.

Schatzi Throckmorton (BA ‘99) - Upon graduating from Northwestern I moved to Napa Valley, California to take a year off before a graduate program in African history in the UK. However, I fell in love with wine, the community and the place. This year marks the 25th harvest of my winery, Relic Wine Cellars, and the 10th in our own winery and cave in Soda Canyon. I am also the vice chair of the Napa Valley Vintners Association, our local trade organization. Additionally, a number of years ago, I connected with another NU graduate, Michele Mitchell, and created a documentary film, The Uncondemned, combining my history degree with my chosen occupation. You can read more about my career here.

Jeremy Yellen (BA ‘99) - In December 2024, I published my second book, Japan at War, 1914-1952.

2000s

Mindy Hohenstein Quigley (BA ‘00) - The Seattle Times recently featured Mindy Quigley's lighthearted murder mystery, Sleep in Heavenly Pizza, book four in her Deep Dish mystery series (Minotaur/St. Martin's Press). It praised the book for its “exciting blend of intrigue, laughter, warmth and culinary delights.” The series has been a Woman's World book club pick and was also a winter gift guide selection in Parade magazine.

Steven Nafziger (BA ‘00) - I am inching towards two decades in the Economics Pepartment at Williams College. I teach a variety of economic history courses and hold an affiliate position with the History Department here. Currently, I am co-editor of the European Review of Economic History and pursuing numerous projects on the economic history of the Russian Empire.

Jeff Manuel (BA ‘01) - After spending 2023 in Calgary as a Fulbright Canada Research Chair, I am back to my regularly scheduled teaching at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. For those interested in energy or environmental history, my co-authored book on the history of biofuels in the US and Brazil (Ethanol: A Hemispheric History for the Future of Biofuels) will be published later this year by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Graham Peck (PhD ‘01) - Graham A. Peck will complete The Selected Speeches of Stephen A. Douglas for submission to the University of Illinois Press this summer. He is looking forward to beginning a sabbatical project this fall on the freedom movement in early Illinois. He and other University of Illinois Springfield colleagues are collaborating so that Making Our History: Artists Render Lincoln’s Legacies, an interdisciplinary art and history project, will be permanently available as a digital project on the H-Net Commons and more accessible to teachers.

Kathryn Schumaker (BA ‘01) - I'm a senior lecturer in American Studies at the University of Sydney. In January 2025 I published Tangled Fortunes: The Hidden History of Interracial Marriage in the Segregated South. I also gave birth to a baby boy in February 2025.

Jaime Huling (BA ‘04) - Jaime Huling, a Supervising Deputy City Attorney in the Oakland City Attorney's Office, was this fall elected as a commissioner of the San Francisco Unified School District. She was the top vote-getter in a contested citywide race, winning over 168,000 votes, and has been chosen by her fellow commissioners to serve as vice-president.

Jennifer Luczkowiak (BA ‘04) - In June 2024, Jennifer Luczkowiak was elected to the Illinois State Bar Association's (ISBA) Board of Governors. The 27-member Board of Governors oversees the operations and management of ISBA, subject to policies set by the 203-member Assembly.

Thanh Nguyen (BA ‘05) - Since graduating with double major in History and Gender Studies, I had a business career at McMaster-Carr, obtained my JD from GW Law, and became a litigator with international law firms Clifford Chance and Latham & Watkins. I later joined PepsiCo as in-house counsel, building global anti-corruption compliance programs for the company. I now live in San Francisco with my husband and 3 kids aged 1, 3 and 8.

Guy Ortolano (PhD ‘05) - Guy Ortolano is chair of the History Department at NYU.

Lucas Mennella (BA ‘07) - After leaving France to complete a Masters in Berlin and teach in Japan and Rome, I have returned to Paris, where I initially settled after graduating from NU. I work as an IB History teacher and college counselor for the American School of Paris.

Shil Patel (BS ‘07) - After working for eight years in the U.S. Senate in various roles, I recently became Chief of Staff for Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC). History degree comes in handy every day!

Victoria Blanco (BA ‘08) - My first book, Out of the Sierra: A Story of Rarámuri Resistance, was published by Coffee House Press in June of 2024. It was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and was named an Indie Next Pick by the American Booksellers Association. This book got its start at Northwestern, in both history and creative writing classes!

2010s

Crystal Sanders (PhD ‘11) - My new book, entitled A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in October 2024. The African American Intellectual History Society awarded the book its 2025 Pauli Murray Book Prize.

Cory Haala (BA ‘12) - I have served as Assistant Professor of History and Museum Studies Coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point since 2023. In April 2025 I published a chapter titled “’Why We Must Save the Family Farm’: Midwestern Liberalism and Progressive Agricultural Policy, 1985-1996,” in The Liberal Heartland: A Political History of the Postwar American Midwest (University Press of Kansas), and in 2024 I wrote an article on Tim Walz and the Midwestern populist tradition for TIME's Made by History series and appeared on Indiana Public Media's Inner States podcast. My first book, When Democrats Won the Heartland: Progressive Populism in the Age of Reagan, 1978-1992, is in production with University of Illinois Press and will be out in 2026.

Nate Edwards (BA ‘13) - In April 2025, I led a virtual seminar for the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR), based on my work on the history of baseball video games around the world. My ongoing entertainment history project lives at the website 30-30.club.

Chase Carnevale (BA ‘15) - Like an exhausted waste management technician, Chase Carnevale has finally gotten his shit together. He currently has a job in finance, is going on a shrine tour of Japan this summer, and has begun working on what he hopes to be his first published novel. Stay Heinous, Wildcats.

Nathaniel Mathews (PhD ‘16) - My book, Zanzibar Was a Country, came out with UC Press April 2024 and was named by History Today as one of its “Books of the Year.” It also won the inaugural Monsoon Book Prize for History.

Will Frolich (BA ‘17) - This spring I'll graduate from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs with a Masters in Public Administration. My focus was on Urban and Social Policy but I have to admit, the most interesting course I've taken was History for Policymakers. I'm currently working on a paper looking at a novel approach to community engagement for implementing smart-street technology in Harlem and hope to apply what I've learned towards improving city government once I graduate.

Fiona Maxwell (BA ‘18) - I am excited to share that I have started a new role as Assistant Director of Graduate Career Development at UChicagoGRAD. At GRAD, I provide one-on-one advising and skills-based workshops to University of Chicago graduate students in the Humanities and Social Sciences, with a focus on professional development, public speaking, and writing. I will receive my PhD in History from the University of Chicago in June 2025 after defending my dissertation, “Democratic Ensembles: Spoken Art and Politics at Chicago Settlement Houses, 1890-1920,” with distinction in March. The project, which is supported by the Debra Mesch Doctoral Fellowship for Research on Women’s Philanthropy and the Benjamin Bloom Dissertation Fellowship, grew out of the History senior thesis I completed at Northwestern. My most recent scholarly article, “Talking lowd and laughing gay, Everyone has so much to say: Working Girls’ Clubs, Spoken Art and Political Organising at Chicago Settlement Houses, 1890-1920,” has been published in Lilith: A Feminist History Journal. I also contributed an episode on “Club Newspapers and Civic Collaboration at Chicago Settlement Houses” to C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists Podcast and presented on “Women’s Oratory and Activism at Chicago Settlement Houses” at the inaugural conference of the Chicago Women’s History Center.

Cairo Dye (BS ‘19) - I have joined the program committee of the board of the Historic Pullman Foundation to advise on community engagement and educational programming.

2020s

Soren Campbell (BA ‘21) - Soren Campbell will attend the University of Toronto MA in History program in the fall, studying nineteenth-century Europe with a focus on Germanic lands. He is excited to take the next step in his academic journey. Go Cats.

William Boatman (BA ‘22) - I am currently in my second year of law school at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, WI. I will be heading back to Chicagoland this summer to work as a summer associate at the large civil rights firm Loevy + Loevy.

Cindy Shou (BA ‘23) - Since August 2024 I’ve been in Taipei, Taiwan, teaching English at an elementary school through a Fulbright grant. I’ve really enjoyed traveling around Taiwan and learning from the locals. I’ll be returning to the US in July to start medical school.

Robby Tonick (BA ‘23) - I am currently finishing my first year of Medical School at New York Medical College. And I am taking an elective course on the History of Medicine (all thanks to my history degree)!!!

Jane Clarke (BA '24) - After living and working in Boston after graduation, I am headed to England next year as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. While completing my MPhil in American History at the University of Cambridge, I will build on research I began during my senior thesis. I plan to write my master's dissertation on imperialism in American and British children's literature from the early twentieth century, comparing how audiences read and thought about their country's empires. These interests began in Harris Hall. Although I did not enter Northwestern as a history major, the department's course offerings and top-notch faculty quickly won me over. Current events continue to bring to mind the classes I took on the histories of abortion, fascism, and US foreign relations. Perhaps more importantly, I credit the History Department with supporting my intellectual growth--my ability to think critically and ask interesting questions. Go 'Cats!

Erica Gilbert-Levin (PhD ‘24) - My original research article, “Trumbull Talk: White Vernacular and the Politics of Persecution, 1953-1954,” was published in the Journal of Urban History in April 2025. If interested in a complementary pdf version, please reach out to Erica at ericagilbert-levin2022@u.northwestern.edu or elerica.070@gmail.com.

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