Alumni News
1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s
1950s
Bruce Benson (BA ʼ59) writes: “My experience in the History Dept. implanted the unique nature of the American experiment, and has led me to treasure what we have as a Constitutional Republic. To see one like President Trump, emerge, gives much hope to our future.”
1960s
Howard R. Holter (BA ʼ62) writes: “Published book, The Last of the Californios: The Pico Family, 1775-1894. My BA was in history, and I am Emeritus Professor of History, California State University, Dominguez Hills.”
William A. Hoisington, Jr. (BA ʼ63) writes: “My article “Education, Politics, and Race in Chicago, 1926-67” appeared in the spring 2020 Chicago History Museum member magazine. If you would like a copy (and the CHM archival photos are stunning), e-mail me at williamh@uic.edu and I will send it as an attachment.”
Joel A. Tarr (PhD ʼ63) writes: “I am the Caliguiri University Professor of History & Policy at Carnegie Mellon where I have been on the faculty since 1967. In 2019 and 2020 I published the following, E. K. Muller and J . A. Tarr, Making Industrial Pittsburgh Modern: Environment, Landscape, Transportation and Planning (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019); ‘Illuminating the streets, alleys, parks and suburbs of the American City: non-networked technologies, 1870-1920,’ History & Technology (May, 2020); and Bill Luckin and Joel A. Tarr, ‘Water for the Multitudes: London and New York 1800- 2016,’ in B. Luckin and P. Thorsheim (eds), A Mighty Capital under Threat: The Environmental History of London, 1800-2000, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020). I am co-editor with Martin Melosi of the University of Pittsburgh Press series on the Environmental History of Cities.”
Oxford University Press (India) has published “The Arthur Crawford Scandal, Corruption, Governance, and Indian Victims,” by Ambassador Michael D. Metelits (BA ʼ64).
Gretchen Cassel Eick (MA ʼ65) worked on Capitol Hill as a foreign and military policy lobbyist, earned a Ph.D. in American Studies (University of Kansas, ʼ97), and became a Professor of History. Her book on the civil rights movement—Dissent in Wichita: The Civil Rights Movement in the Midwest, 1954-1972 (University of Illinois Press, 2001/2008) won three awards. They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastmans’ Story (University of Nevada Press, 2020) tells the history of Indian policy 1860-1940. Three-time Fulbright Scholar, widely traveled, since 2015 she has published 4 novels. She lives in Kansas and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Jeffrey Thomas Price (BA ʼ65) writes: “After Northwestern I studied philosophy at Penn State. Part of my graduate education there was supported by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. As I neared completion of my Ph.D., the Foundation promoted a program wherein former fellows teach first at an historically black college in the south. I landed at Talladega College in the fall of 1969. The program was intended to have the fellows (now called Woodrow Wilson Teaching Interns) stay at the college for just one year, but, one thing leading to another, I spent a second year at Talladega, then five years at Tuskegee Institute, teaching philosophy and a more general humanities program and becoming an Associate Professor with tenure. I have many vivid fond memories of those seven years. In 1976 I followed a number of my former students to Harvard Law School, graduating in 1979. Since then my day job has been the practice of law in Boston, currently at the Prince Lobel & Tye firm.”
David Gerber (BA ʼ66) writes: “I retired in 2014, with the rank of University at Buffalo Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus and remain a Research Fellow in the Department of History and the Center for Disability Studies, of which I was the founding director. I continue to teach in the university’s Honors Program. I have prepared a second edition of American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction. Published in July, 2020 with Bruce Dierenfield is our coauthored Disability Rights and Religious Liberty in Education (University of Illinois Press). I am now engaged in research on American prisoners of war in the Asia during World War II.”
Charles W Dunn III (BA ʼ68) writes: “In 2011 I retired as a classroom instructor, having taught American History AP at the high school level and Global History Since 1945 as an adjunct professor at Triton College. After my parents passed away, I gained access to 900 love letters that they had exchanged in Europe during WWII: Dad as a pathfinder navigator on a B-17, Mom as an evacuation nurse in an Army tent hospital. After cross-referencing their correspondence with both the historical record and anecdotes that they later shared with me, I published The Nurse and The Navigator: A Son’s Memoir of His Parents’ Battlefield Romance.”
Edward I Steinhart (PhD ʼ69) writes: “Before being locked down in our home in Vancouver, BC, Anita Fellman (Ph.D., 1969) and I managed to spend 2 months traveling in Africa. Three weeks in Ethiopia, a first for us both; a week in Malawi and a short safari in Zambia and 10 days in and around Cape Town. For me, a side trip to Uganda at the invitation of H.E. Y. K. Museveni in order to discuss my book on the history of western Uganda, based on my NU dissertation, was an extraordinary event and a chance to renew an acquaintance with Museveni, who I met during my field research trip to Uganda in 1968.”
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1970s
John F. Reiger (PhD ʼ70) writes: “Inspired by conservation/environmental leaders like George Bird Grinnell, Theodore Roosevelt, and Aldo Leopold, who are the subjects of most of my scholarship, I continue to wage a daily battle against the ‘deregulation’ and ‘privatization’ policies of the malignant narcissist in the White House and his Republican allies. My efforts, like those by others in regard to different aspects of this flagrantly corrupt administration, have largely failed. This is certainly not what I thought my retirement would be like!”
John S. Watterson (PhD ʼ70) is retired and living in Charlottesville, Virginia. He continues to be active in history of sport, contributing book reviews on college football and reading manuscripts. In the fall of 2018, he travelled to the Cotswolds, northwest of London, where he spent an afternoon with Frank Prochaska, Ph.D., 1971, and his wife Alice in their converted coach-house pub in Charlbury.
Terrence H. Witkowski (BA ʼ70) writes: “This year I will be publishing two history articles in the Journal of Macromarketing (a journal that explores the interactions among markets, marketing, and society). ‘Guns for Christmas: Advertising in Boys’ Life Magazine, 1911-2012’ will appear in the September issue. ‘Male Compensatory Consumption in American History’ will be included in the December special issue on gender and Macromarketing. Both are currently available via Sage’s OnlineFirst. I am the sole author of each work. My M.S. (UCLA) and Ph.D.(UC Berkeley) were in business (marketing emphasis), but as a researcher, I have been primarily a marketing and consumption historian.”
Jeff Rice (BA ʼ72) writes: “After 20 years as a WCAS academic adviser and Senior Lecturer in first History and later Political Science I am taking Emeritus Status from Northwestern University and Weinberg College. I will be leaving Evanston after 52 years and heading west to Galena. I hope to continue my pursuit of first rate mystery novels and continue my research into non-natural disasters like famines, genocides, and civil wars.”
Don H. Doyle (PhD ʼ73) writes: “After 46 years of teaching, I am happily retired and living with my wife in Folly Beach, just outside of Charleston, SC. Decades ago, soon after I was tenured at Vanderbilt, I remember telling George Fredrickson, my mentor at Northwestern, that I found myself busier than ever in a new research project. ‘That’s the idea,’ he told me. ‘You got tenure because they expect you will keep on writing.’ So it was. I’m finishing a book on the international history of Reconstruction, which takes me (virtually) all over Latin America, Canada, and Europe, and keeps me occupied in these dark times.”
Joseph U. Schorer (BA ʼ75) writes: “My wife Millie Calhoun and I were history majors. We are retired from the active practice of law. I am an adjunct professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. Rep. Adam Schiff was the fall 2019 guest speaker at NU for the Leopold Lecture program that some other alums and I started in 1990. I am a member of the local and national leadership teams for a pro bono financial literacy program called Credit Abuse Resistance Education. The best trip Millie and I have had so far: around the world on a private jet.”
Fred Katz (BA ʼ76) writes: “Twenty years ago, I gave up the practice of law and became a high school teacher. I think my experience as one of the initial tutors at The Writing Place (in 1975-76) had opened my eyes to the joy in teaching. I taught various classes in History, Government and Law during my years as a teacher, working at two private schools in Westchester County, NY. I truly loved my work as a teacher. It was extremely enjoyable to teach the material for my classes, and as with any teacher, I also learned as I was teaching. But more than that, I found working with young people to be incredibly energizing; their eagerness and curiosity were infectious. I left my teaching position at the end of June, and I am relocating (with my wife) from Westchester to the Albany, NY area, where one of our sons lives. Thank you to the History Department at NU for giving me such a such a solid foundation in the study of history. I hope that I have been able to pass on the fruits of that foundation to my students over the last 20 years.”
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1980s
Michael R. Fischbach (BA ʼ80) recently published his second book on how the black freedom struggle and the white Left in America dealt with the Arab-Israeli conflict during the 1960s and 1970s. Entitled The Movement and the Middle East: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Divided the American Left, it came out in late 2019 with Stanford University Press, the same press that published his 2018 work Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color. Fischbach is professor of history at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia.
Jim Sanders (PhD ʼ80) writes: “Seeking a constructive approach to plague-induced confinement, I embarked on an ambitious program of clutter abatement. (Spousal approval came instantly.) Downsizing freed up space, but at a cost: I was forced to confront my former selves. The theme of Proust’s Remembrance is said to be that ‘Man’s salvation consists in rescuing his past from the clutches of time.’ After sorting through a lifetime of accumulated papers and objects, my ‘rescued’ past mainly shows what a miracle it is that I survived wasted time, lost opportunities, and serial error. If that is salvation, I guess I have Covid to thank for it.”
Todd Arkenberg (BA ʼ81) writes: “My sixth book, Trials & Truffles, Expats in Brussels (Outskirts Press), launched in late June 2020. The memoir recounts the two years that my husband and I lived in central Brussels. In addition to presenting a realistic perspective of the Highs and lows of expat life, the book includes blogs written during our residency that cover an array of cultural and historical topics.”
Gregory Antollino (BA ʼ87) was Counsel of Record in Zarda v. Altitude Express, decided sub nom Bostock v. Clayton Cty., 140 S. Ct. 1731 (2020). Bostock granted LGBT Americans employment rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Gregory argued and won the en banc at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018. His opponent petitioned for Supreme Court review; the High Court heard argument in October 2019. Pamela Karlan, a renowned Supreme Court litigator, argued for both Mssrs. Bostock and Zarda. The decision affirmed the Second Circuit. The practical effect is to require protections of employers in the bare majority of states that do not provide the LGBT any protections, mostly in the South (below Virginia) and other states.
With impeccable timing, Paula Michaels (BA ʼ87) took over as head of the Monash University History Department right before the pandemic cratered the economy, crashed enrolments, and forced the frantic transition to remote delivery. While deeply disappointed that she will be unable to come back to NU to celebrate the retirement of her mentor John Bushnell, she’s feeling pretty good about life choices that led her to move to Australia. Her co-edited book, Gender and Trauma since 1900, will appear with Bloomsbury by the end of year.
Mark Taylor (BA ʼ88, Roanoke, Va.) recently was awarded the J. Hammond Brown Memorial Award from the Outdoor Writers Association of America. The award is the “most prestigious recognition of a member for devoted past service to the organization over a period of continuous years.” Taylor joined OWAA in 1999 and has served in many volunteer leadership roles, including a term on the board of directors and as its president. He is the Eastern Communications Director for Trout Unlimited, a conservation nonprofit based in Arlington, Va. Taylor joined the TU staff in 2014 after 20 years as a newspaper reporter and editor.
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1990s
Jason Musser (BA ʼ92)—under his musical nom de plume Backdoor Frontman—released a new EP of four original songs this year (his fifth release overall), entitled Class Traitor. The title track has been described as “when your crush becomes a Karen.” Full release available on Spotify, YouTube, etc. View the Lyric video
Adam West (BA ʼ93) writes: “My family and I are enjoying being in Bangkok, Thailand, where I am assigned to the U.S. Embassy.”
Michelle Gooze-Miller (BA ʼ94) writes: “Hi. I am still working as an estate planning attorney in Chicago, raising 4 kids and launching a financial education app (Findulting), initially targeted at college students. This has been an interesting year for my children, with two in college and two in high school, not knowing what the coming year will bring. Other than that, we are just making our way through this weird time. Here is hoping all of you are staying healthy and safe.”
Margaret Pushkar Berry (BA ʼ95) writes: “Still living in New York City (Williamsburg, Brooklyn to be precise), with my husband, Chris, and daughters Lucy (age 12) and Grace (age 9). Working at Bloomberg Financial Markets, where I have been since college, running a division in the Americas that services large, global asset managers. I love keeping in touch with all the Wildcats in NYC, my Wash, DC hometown and all the many friends from NU in the US and abroad. Until COVID 19 I was on the road for work every week from London to San Francisco, from Mexico City to Toronto. Please keep in touch!”
Julia Rhoads (BA ʼ95) writes: “I received my MFA in Performance at the School of the Art Institute Chicago, and am currently a Lecturer and Director of Dance at the University of Chicago. In 2000, I founded the dance-theater company Lucky Plush Productions, and we are a MacArthur Award-winning ensemble that creates original devised work that tours nationally and internationally. Things are obviously on hold with Covid (who knows when people will return to live performance?), but the alumni might be interested to know about our program Virtual Dance Lab which offers all kinds of movement classes online (for all levels and styles including Friday night Cuban Salsa Fusion!).”
Nicole Hudgins (BA ʼ96) recently came out with her second book, The Gender of Photography, a transnational look at the early decades of the medium. She is an associate professor of history at the University of Baltimore.
Melissa Yoon (nee Dulac) (BA ʼ97) writes: “I am Deputy General Counsel for Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a pharmaceutical company in Carlsbad, CA that discovers and develops RNA-targeted therapeutics for a wide variety of diseases. I live in Carlsbad with my husband and two daughters (ages 6 and 3).”
Amanda I Seligman (PhD ʼ99) was a finalist for the Council on Undergraduate Research’s Arts and Humanities mentor award in 2020. She has mentored dozens of graduate and undergraduate students in their work on the Encyclopedia of Milwaukee. She is now in her 22nd year of teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Jeremy Yellen (BA ʼ99) writes: “I published my first book, The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War (Cornell University Press, 2019). I was also recently promoted to Associate Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.”
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2000s
Paul Marchegiani (BA ʼ00) writes: “I work as Vice President of Business Affairs at Warner Bros., where I negotiate and advise on high-level actor, writer, director, producer, rights, and licensing deals for Warner Horizon Television.”
Steven Nafziger (BA ʼ00) writes: “I am a professor of economics and faculty affiliate in history at Williams College, where I teach a variety of economic history courses. Needless to say, Northwestern was where all of that began.”
Andrew Majit (BA ʼ01) has used the shelter-in-place order to translate the screenplay of the 2010 comedy film “MacGruber” into both Flemish and French. He will be both directing and starring in the stage adaptation at the Flanders Spring Film Festival in Belgium in May 2021. Andrew first gravitated toward bilingual expression during his tenure on the executive board of GLOBE, an internationally-minded student group, while at Northwestern.
Jessica Ray Herzogenrath (BA ʼ02) writes: “I will join the faculty of the history department at Texas A&M University as an Instructional Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Innovation in fall 2020. As the 2018-2019 John S. Aubrey Fellow at the Newberry Library, I traveled to Chicago to research dance writer Ann Barzel.”
Seth Hines (BA ʼ03) writes: “My lovely wife Fan Yang and our handsome baby boy Sidney Marcus Hines, born December 3, 2019, just relocated from Royersford, PA, to Blacksburg, VA. We are enjoying life in the mountains while I am practicing family dentistry in Floyd and Dublin, VA. My parents, Sharon and Edward Hines, have been enjoying quiet days this summer at nearby Smith Mountain Lake.”
Guy Ortolano (PhD ʼ05) published Thatcher’s Progress: From Social Democracy to Market Liberalism through an English New Town (Cambridge, 2019), the first book in a new series co-edited by Deborah Cohen. Since leaving Evanston fifteen years ago, Guy and Jenny Mann (NU English PhD ʼ06) commuted between various places, until NYU hired Jenny away from Cornell earlier this year. To join the annual March Madness pool that Guy runs, send a note to ortolano@nyu.edu.
Laura Weinstein (BA ʼ05) writes: “I co-wrote two op-ed pieces on police reform in Northern Ireland [for History News Network and The Conversation]. Although the countries have many differences, there is still much that Americans can learn from the complex process of overhauling the police in that historically divided state.”
In 2020, Jarod Roll (PhD ʼ06) published his third book, Poor Man’s Fortune: White Working-Class Conservatism in American Metal Mining, 1850-1950 (University of North Carolina Press), and was promoted to professor of history at the University of Mississippi.
Martin Zacharia (BA ʼ06) recently became the Director of Social Studies at Niles West High School in Skokie, Illinois. Prior to that, he taught History and coached Debate at William Fremd High School in Palatine, Illinois.
Fareesa Abbasi (BA ʼ07) writes: “After over a decade of living and working in Hong Kong, I returned to the U.S. about a year ago and moved to New York City. After working for years in manufacturing and finance, I transitioned into the nonprofit sector. I am currently working for a nonprofit called Futures and Options, dedicated to helping under resourced and underserved New York City youth with career readiness training as well as paid mentored internships. With the transition to e-learning and the cancelation of summer youth programs, it has been rewarding to help young people in need with opportunities and get them on a career path.”
Andrew Epstein (BA ʼ07) is living the Colorado mountain life while practicing law as a cyber/data/privacy attorney at Cooley LLP in Denver.
David Ernst (BA/BMus ʼ07) writes: “I’m currently working as the Associate Director of Digital Marketing at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine alongside fellow Wildcat Aaron Morse (Medill ʼ10). I live with my wife Elizabeth Rhodes (Mus ʼ06/Medill ʼ07) and our 3 year old son, William near Portland in Scarborough. Hope all the history alums and more are coping well and staying safe during this challenging time.”
Rhiannon Stephens (PhD ʼ07) received a Andrew W. Mellon New Directions Fellowship for her project “Precolonial African History and Historical Climate Change: An Interdisciplinary Approach” and will spend the 2020-21 academic year studying for an MA in Climate and Society at Columbia University.
Michael Breidenbach (BA ʼ08) was promoted to Associate Professor of History at Ave Maria University. He will publish Our Dear-Bought Liberty: Catholics and Religious Toleration in Early America with Harvard University Press in 2021. His edited volume, The Cambridge Companion to the First Amendment and Religious Liberty, was published last spring.
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2010s
Tristan Cabello (PhD ʼ11) was appointed Associate Director of the Master of Liberal Arts at Johns Hopkins University in September 2018. Since then, he has worked to transition the program to a fully online degree. The skills he has acquired during this process have been very useful in the past few months!
Frances Courtney Kneupper (PhD ʼ11) writes: “I have been appointed Senior Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study, Central European University, in Budapest this academic year, in order to complete my second book Beware of False Prophets: The Contest over Prophecy in Late Medieval Europe. Fingers crossed that I will be able to travel to Budapest. Otherwise, I will participate remotely.”
Cory Haala (BA ʼ12) writes: “In March 2020 I defended my doctoral dissertation in modern U.S. history from Marquette University, a project titled ‘The Progressive Center: Midwestern Liberalism in the Age of Reagan, 1978-1992.’ In May my chapter, “‘There Exists a Conservative Veneer’: Terry Branstad, Chuck Grassley, and the New Right’s Capture of Republican Politics in Iowa, 1976-1986,” was published as part of The Conservative Heartland: A Political History of the Postwar American Midwest (University Press of Kansas). Currently I serve as an Adjunct Lecturer in History at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota.”
Michael Lowry Lamble (BA ʼ14) writes: “I recently completed my MA in Museology at the University of Washington. What’s more, I passed my thesis defense without contingencies, which was very exciting! I have graduated into a less than ideal job market, especially for museums, but I am hopeful that I will begin a successful career in public history when the pandemic is over!”
James Zarsadiaz (PhD ʼ14) received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor of History at the University of San Francisco. He also serves as Director of the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program. James is currently writing a book about regional planning, politics, and post-1965 Asian American settlement in suburban Los Angeles. His book is under contract with University of California Press.
Hope For The Day has delivered its direct education programming to 15,000 persons in 2020 as of July 1, 2020. As Co-founder of HFTD, Carl J. Evans (BA ʼ14) is the creator of the pioneering proactive suicide prevention theory. HFTD programming is represented in all 50 states, 26 countries, and featured in 17 different languages. Proactive prevention is designed to innovate the reactive based structures of traditional suicide prevention and mental healthcare through tools for early recognition and intervention. Carl was building HFTD while still an undergrad at NU and since graduation HFTD and Carl Evans have been successfully disrupting the highest risk factors for suicide and mental health crisis.
After graduation, Karen Adjei (BA ʼ18) worked with NU Libraries on the Native American Educational Services Project and provided access to humanities resources. Later, she worked at the Smithsonian Institution through various internships and a fellowship. There, she worked on programming related to Japanese American history, Latinx baseball history, and African American and Latinx social justice initiatives. She also worked with D.C. Public Library to acquire Civil Rights Movement material for their renovated space. She volunteers with the Germantown Historical Society on making local history more accessible and inclusive, and is revamping her senior thesis on Japanese American women in Chicago to submit as a shorter piece to the Smithsonian.
Annie Boniface (BA ʼ18) writes: “I am beginning a PhD in international history at Harvard this coming fall! I’m excited to continue the work I began with Prof. Cadava in undergrad and to keep learning/writing about history (even if it happens online). While my plan as of now is to focus on Antarctica and treaty-making in the 20th century, I’m also ready to learn more about U.S. foreign relations and the history of global capitalism. A million thanks to the history department at NU for making it all happen!”
Samantha Schmidt (BA ʼ18) writes: “I am now teaching 10th grade History at my former high school, St. Stephen’s, in Austin, Texas! At our school, 10th graders study American history prior to 1900, and since I focused on Middle Eastern history at Northwestern, re-learning American history in order to teach it has been an interesting and worthwhile adventure, especially in the current political climate. Adapting to remote teaching has also been challenging, but I am hopeful that my students and I can rise to the occasion. This job makes me even more appreciative of my professors at NU and the incredible work they do!”
Yuri Doolan (PhD ʼ19) writes: “I have been awarded The Immigration and Ethnic History Society’s Carlton C. Qualey Memorial Article Award for my essay, “Transpacific Camptowns: Korean Women, U.S. Army Bases, and Military Prostitution in America” (Journal of American Ethnic History, Vol. 38, No. 4, Summer 2019).”
Cammy Harris (BA ʼ19) is currently the Program Manager for the Tennessee Holocaust Commission, where she supports Tennessee teachers with their Holocaust curriculum, creates community programming, develops historical exhibits, and works with the state legislature to advance Holocaust education statewide. Due to the COVID19 pandemic, the Commission has halted all in-person activities and is working with national partners to champion the transition to virtual Holocaust education safely, responsibly, and effectively. Most notably in her tenure thus far, Cammy has built an internship program, which is equally committed to giving interns hands on non-profit work experience and building professional development skills.
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