University of Houston Department of History

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University of Houston Department of History

Through rigorous scholarship, excellent teaching, and a commitment to the community, our department shows why history matters.

05/31/2026

What are some of the results of a research fellowship in history? Dr. Alexey Golubev, Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Houston, shares how a 2024-25 fellowship from the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine helped him complete research for his latest book project. Using archival materials in the northeastern United States, Dr. Golubev shows how "throughout the entire Cold War period from late Stalinism to Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, Soviet authorities and intellectuals conducted one of the most massive state-sponsored campaigns for public communication of science in history." https://www.chstm.org/news/knowledge-propaganda-soviet-socialism-epistemic-project

05/29/2026

The Department of History at UH celebrates its outstanding graduate students, many of whom specialize in the histories of South Asia and its global connections. PhD Candidate Sutanwi Chatterjee studies the history of medicine and disease in port cities and has presented her work in a paper, ''Mercury as Medicine in the Indian Subcontinent (1750-1915)," at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference. Her current work examines the socio-cultural and diplomatic roles of urban colonial authorities and physicians in Bombay dockyards' medical infrastructure policies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

05/27/2026

Sharing Stories from 1977: PUTTING THE NATIONAL WOMEN'S CONFERENCE ON THE MAP, a co-directed project by UH History faculty Drs. Nancy Beck Young and Leandra Zarnow. At https://sharingstories1977.uh.edu/discover you can learn more about women who shaped the conference, including Fa’au’uga Suesue Lutu Achica (Delegate from American Samoa) and Delthia Akiu (Delegate from Hawaii), among many others. According to NWC Delegate Mary Arimoto from California, “For Asian and Pacific women, it was the first time we have ever met nationally, and we’re going to try to develop a national network.” (quoted in Los Angeles Times, November 24, 1977). This project exemplifies the public-facing work our historians do at UH and a reminder of the interconnections of and

05/24/2026

Dr. N. L. A. Gharala, Associate Professor of History, was honored this year with a President's Circle Award from the University of Houston in recognition of the volume Everyday Life in the Philippines (1657-1699): Selections from the Manuscripts of Juan de Paz, edited with Marya Svetlana T. Camacho and Juan Mesquida (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). Using a unique manuscript from the collections of the Archivo de la Universidad de Santo Tomás in Manila, the authors provide a window into the concerns, problems, and entanglements of people of different ethnicities, occupations, and stations in life. Paz’s writings resolving conflicts and weighing in on questions (consultas) have not previously been translated into English. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-81493-8

05/23/2026

UH Historian Dr. Xiaoping Cong is a scholar of late imperial and 20th century China, focusing on women's history, intellectual history, legal history, and the history of modern education in China. She received her Ph.D. from UCLA in 2001 and joined the University of Houston community in the same year. Her prize-winning book Teachers' Schools and the Making of Modern Chinese Nation-state, 1897-1937 examines the social and political aspects and impacts of these schools. Dr. Cong teaches widely on the histories of China and Japan, as well as China in World History.

05/22/2026

UH Historian Dr. Nandini Bhattacharya is Professor of South Asian history and history of medicine and the author of Disparate Remedies: Making Medicines in Modern India (2023). Dr. Bhattacharya's book follows the evolution of medicine in colonial India as it confronted Indian modernity and changing public attitudes surrounding health and drugs. A leading scholar and graduate mentor in our department, Dr. Bhattacharya's work has been supported by several international grants and institutions. She is currently at work on a study of the social history of alcohol.

05/21/2026

The Department of History congratulates Nine Abad (Class of 2026) on an award-winning senior honors thesis tracing the intertwined histories of Filipino folkloric monsters and spiritual leaders! Under the direction of Dr. N. L. A. Gharala (Associate Professor of History), Nine completed the thesis research and writing, which earned an Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis Award and the inaugural Guenther Peace and Justice Award. This new award encourages deep research into, and future careers that address, the paramount ethical issues facing our global community today. Nine's research on the past, present, and future of practitioners combined historical sources, analysis of contemporary artworks, and family history to create a thought-provoking senior thesis. Nine is pictured here providing comment at a History lecture on piracy in the Philippines. Pagbati!

05/20/2026

CAS congratulates our Associate Student Dr. Priscilla JudsonWallace on her graduation after successfully defending her dissertation "Claudia Jones and the Black Radical Tradition: A Global Analysis." Her examiners were her advisor, Dr. David McNally, along with Drs. Tshepo Chery, Pratik Chakrabarti, and James Parisot.

05/19/2026

Forthcoming from The University of Pittsburgh Press this fall! The Department of History at the University of Houston is home to leading scholars in the histories of science and medicine, including Dr. Pratik Chakrabarti, the National Endowment for the Humanities Cullen Chair in History and Medicine. His new co-edited volume is Gondwanaland: Modern Histories of an Ancient Supercontinent. Dr. Chakrabarti is the author of Inscriptions of Nature: Geology and the Naturalization of Antiquity (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020), among other prize-winning books and articles on empire, science, medicine, South Asia, and global history.

05/07/2026

The Department of History has hosted multiple scholars of South Asia and its complex histories this past year. For AAPI month, a short series on how our department contributes to this important field by bringing researchers together. We are a hub of research innovation at all levels, especially graduate and faculty. The Project on Health is Politics annual conference organized by UH History graduate students showcased papers on the histories of science and medicine across Asia, and especially in South Asia. The Department hosted Dr. Stephanie Hassell (Clemson) to launch her recent monograph, Slavery and Religious Conversion in Portugal’s Indian Empire, 1500-1700. Dr. Joppan George visited from the Smithsonian to share “Airborne Colony’s Atmosfears: Poison Gas on the Frontier of British India.” Our graduate students and faculty bring events to campus to take our research in new directions and keep our University community engaged with global ideas, research, and scholars.

Address

4104 Martin Luther King Boulevard
Houston, TX
77204

Telephone

+17137433083

Website

http://www.uh.edu/class/history/

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