2026 History Newsletter
Message from the Chair
Department Spotlights
Faculty Kudos
Alumni Class Notes
Message from the Chair
Greetings to all of our alumni from the George Washington University Department of History! In this newsletter, you’ll read about some of the exciting things happening in the department, including the achievements of our community of alumni, faculty and students.
The History Department continues to defy national trends in expanding its number of undergraduate majors and graduate students thanks to our talented faculty, students and alumni. This fall, with Museum Studies and American Studies, the History Department launched the new MA in Museums, History & Culture, and the program already has 15 students in its inaugural class!
In the past year, we have also mourned the loss of esteemed members of our department community. With sadness, we note the passing of CCAS Dean Emeritus and former Professor of British and Irish History Robert W. Kenny. Each year, CCAS recognizes Dean Kenny’s special dedication to teaching through the Robert W. Kenny Prize for Innovation in Teaching, which is awarded annually to a CCAS faculty member. We also mourn the losses of Lois Schwoerer, the Elmer Louis Kayser Professor of History Emerita at GW and a former Scholar-in-Residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library; and Christopher Brick, BA ’02, former director of the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project.
Thank you, as always, for your generous support for the History Department. To cite but one example of the generosity of the GW History community: In the past year, the William H. Becker Economic History Prize has been endowed in honor of beloved former History Chair and Professor William H. Becker (and the prize is still accepting donations).
Thanks again for your support and involvement, which makes our continued success possible. Please stay in touch.
Sincerely,
Denver Brunsman
Department Chair
Department Spotlights
Hope Harrison Honored by German Government
Professor of History and International Affairs Hope Harrison was awarded Germany’s highest civilian honor—the prestigious Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Recognizing her achievements in shaping our understanding of the Cold War and strengthening ties between Germany and the United States, she was presented with the award by German Ambassador to the United States, Andreas Michaelis. The ceremony was featured in GW Today.
Preserving the Presidency: A Conversation with Lindsay Chervinsky
GW alumna and renowned historian, scholar and researcher Lindsay Chervinsky, BA ’10, was profiled in GW Today. She was named the executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. She is responsible for Washington’s papers and manuscripts, research, fellowships, lecture series and leadership programming.
Faculty Kudos
Abigail Agresta received the NLM Michael E. DeBakey Fellowship in the History of Medicine from the National Library of Medicine for her new book project, The Rise of Quarantine in Late Medieval Spain.
Aaron Bateman received two competitive grants, the Smith Richardson Strategy and Policy Grant and the Stanton Foundation Nuclear Security Grant, to support archival research travel for his second book, provisionally titled Preparing for World War III: Information Networks and American Power in the Nuclear Age.
Steven Brady authored Less Than Victory: American Catholics and the Vietnam War, the first book to explore both the impact the Vietnam War had on American Catholics and the impact of the nation’s largest religious group upon its most controversial war.
Lisa Ford co-authored Inquiring into Empire: Colonial Commissions and British Imperial Reform, 1819–1833 (Cambridge University Press, 2025), the first history of Britain’s vast imperial investigation in the years between the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and the Great Reform Act of 1832.
Hope M. Harrison accepted a Alfried Krupp Fellowship at the University of Greifswald in Germany for the 2025-2026 academic year for the project “Life and Death on East Germany’s Blue Border: The Wall at the Baltic Sea.”
Timothy Shenk authored “Democrats Are in Crisis. Eat-the-Rich Populism is the Only Answer” for the New York Times and appeared in Times opinion video “This is What the Future of the Democratic Party Should Be.”
David Silverman authored The Chosen and the Damned: Native Americans and the Making of Race in the United States (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2026), his latest book to place Native Americans at the center of American history. His research was featured in the CCAS Spotlight newsmagazine and GW Today.
Quito J. Swan authored Born a Sufferah: Dancehall Music's Insurgent Soundscapes (Bloomsbury, 2025), an innovative work that traces Black internationalism through the musical genres of Reggae and Dancehall.
Alumni Class Notes
Michael Carley, BA ’67, retired as professor of history at the University of Montreal.
Laura Donnelly, MA ’78, retired from University administration and now teaches history and art history for the Osher program at Johns Hopkins University. She credits GW’s History and Art History Departments for her fantastic second career.
Noah Duell, BA ’18, is senior development officer at the Fraunces Tavern Museum in New York City, where he stewards support for one of Lower Manhattan’s landmark historic structures.
Daniel Kassl, BA ’21, is currently in his second year as a law student at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. He recently finished an externship with the U.S. Attorney‚ Äôs Office for the Northern District of Illinois. He is externing with a federal district judge in the Northern District in the spring and will then join Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom as a summer associate.
Benjamin Klubes, BA ’87, after leaving the Department of Housing and Urban Development in January 2025 as acting general counsel, has started their own law firm in Washington, D.C., the Klubes Law Group. They do white collar criminal, Congressional investigation and consumer financial services work at the firm.
Aidan Kolenik, BA ’19, currently resides in Brooklyn and is the head of research and reference services for the JPMorganChase Corporate History Collection.
Charles Thomas Long, PhD ’05, now being actually “retired,” has been able to spend time with family, work on two books (the dissertation about the Virginia Navy of the American Revolution and one about Normandy based on the biographies done by students in The Price of Freedom: Normandy 1944), and travel. The past year has included trips to New Hampshire, with family on a Disney Cruise and a spectacular Smithsonian Journeys trip to southern Africa.
Philip Runfola, BA ’64, has been retired for 29 years from a 35-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency. He has been living in Florida for 28 years and is a member of Sigma Chi Fraternity Epsilon Chapter.
William Taylor, PhD ’10, is the Lee Drain Endowed University Professor of global security studies and department chair at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas. Taylor is the series editor for two book series, Studies in Civil-Military Relations with the University Press of Kansas and Studies in Marine Corps History and Amphibious Warfare with the Naval Institute Press, and the author or editor of seven books, including most recently The All-Volunteer Force: Fifty Years of Service (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2023).