Department of History

As I settle into my first weeks as department chair, fourteen years after the conclusion of my first term, senses of familiarity and difference are battling it out in my mind. Same office, same furniture, same view out the window. And, of course, some of ...

Faculty   Harry Rich Professor of Holocaust Studies Natalia Aleksiun received the Dalck and Rose Feith Family Fellowship from the Herbert D. Katz Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She will use the yearlong fellowship to work on the history of Eastern Europe’s “cadaver affair,” the controversy ...

> Oren Okhovat (Ph.D., 2023) received a two-year postdoctoral research at Yale University’s Program in Jewish Studies.   > Joseph Angelillo (Ph.D., 2024) was appointed to a lecturer (permanent instructor) position at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.   Defenses > Joseph Angelillo defended his dissertation “The Lost Promise of ...

After 37 years, Jeffrey D. Needell has retired as professor of history. Professor Needell arrived at UF after finishing his graduate work in Latin American, African, and European Cultural History at Yale and Stanford University and teaching for three years at the University of Oregon. ...

The Department of History welcomes four new faculty members in the fall 2024 semester. Assistant Professor William Robert Billups is a historian of the United States in the 20th century. He defended his Ph.D. at Emory University earlier in 2024. In his dissertation, Professor Billups examines ...

The Department of History had a great year of placing research in the world. Collectively, the faculty published a book and several edited collections, had works translated into other languages, and produced 29 articles and book chapters. Here are a few highlights: Professor Jeffrey Adler published ...

Bridget Phillips (‘89) was one of the department’s outstanding students. Her UF program enabled her to spend a summer semester at Cambridge and to go on archeological expeditions to Austria. After finishing her honors thesis in history at UF, she began a Ph.D. at Johns ...

The highlight of the department’s academic calendar each year is our Undergraduate Honors Symposium. The 2024 edition did not disappoint. On April 14, Smathers Library hosted eighteen presenters plus dozens of faculty mentors, family members, and friends. Under the supervision of Honors Program Director and ...

The department is proud to announce the formation of its advisory board. In recent years, the department has increased its outreach efforts to show students and the public the value of a history degree. Readers of this newsletter know that history is a versatile major. ...

By Leah Mazur Historians write about events in the past that inspire them and help them understand the movements that matter to them. For the past seven years, Will Munro (‘24) has participated in the Special Olympics as a unified partner (a participant without disabilities) and ...