Department of History Content

First Opera by Black American — Brought to Light by �ٺ��Ƶ Historian — Gets Its Due

Karen Michele Nikos — January 30, 2025 - 2:59am

Digitized version of original opera by Edmond Dédé uncovered in historian Sally McKee's research.

How Does Kumbh Mela Connect India's Present to its Past?

Karen Michele Nikos — January 16, 2025 - 10:23am

People from all walks of life in India are now gathering for the Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, on the banks of the Ganges River where it meets and mixes with the water of the Yamuna and Sarasvati. The Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj, which takes place every 12 years, and is the largest, pulls together multiple strands of India’s deep cultural past and its status today as the second-most populous nation in the world with international influence and ambition to reach for the stars.

�ٺ��Ƶ Historian Wins Award for ‘Suicide by Proxy’ Book Made into Film

Karen Michele Nikos — November 07, 2024 - 12:41pm

�ٺ��Ƶ Professor Kathy Stuart, author of Suicide by Proxy in Early Modern Germany: Crime, Sin and Salvation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) has won the 2024 Natalie Zemon Davis Prize in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

“What to do about women (and sometimes, men) who gruesomely murdered children because of their own ‘weariness with life?’ This was a dilemma faced by elites in German-speaking lands during the 17th and 18th centuries,’ reads the description of Stuart’s book by award givers.

How Do You Take History from the Front Porch to the Streets?

Karen Michele Nikos — August 19, 2024 - 2:25pm

Dave Peters’ porch in West Oakland is a place everyone in the area knows, partly because of the décor, but mostly because of the effervescent, exuberant man who spends many days there, calling out to neighbors and passersby, letting people know that he is there and letting people know that he recognizes that they are there too.

How Do You Safeguard Endangered Human Rights History in Peru?

Karen Michele Nikos — July 09, 2024 - 12:40pm

Research team led by Charles Walker, professor of history at �ٺ��Ƶ, (not pictured) and Ruth Borja Santa Cruz (center), professor of history at the University of San Marcos in Peru, digitizes documents in Peru. (Courtesy/ Charles Walker)

The Conversation: Does History Matter in Deciding Supreme Court Cases?

Karen Michele Nikos — June 21, 2024 - 8:26am

Historians are coming out of the archives and sharing their expertise. (Getty Images)

�ٺ��Ƶ Historian’s Research of Child Murder in Early Modern Europe Featured in Period Film

Karen Michele Nikos — February 16, 2024 - 8:30am

Kathy Stuart, associate professor of history, delights in crime and deviance — her research specialty. The University of California, Davis, academic’s enthusiasm for blood, heinous crimes and the various ways people kill each other hovers somewhere between an obsessed prosecutor and a delighted child who takes in horror movies on Saturday afternoons.

The Conversation: Is Ukraine Adapting the Ancient Practice of Trophy Displays?

Karen Michele Nikos — September 09, 2022 - 9:38am

As Ukraine prepared to celebrate its independence day even while its military forces battled a monthslong Russian invasion, government officials assembled a grandiose, yet gruesome, display on Khreshchatyk, the main street of Ukraine’s capital city, Kyiv.

How Did America's Right-Wing Newspaper Barons Help Fuel Hitler's Extremism?

Karen Michele Nikos — August 19, 2022 - 3:38pm

A discussion about the "Fake News' of the Day

�ٺ��Ƶ Historians Bring Women’s Stories to National Parks of the Pacific, West

Karen Michele Nikos — March 28, 2022 - 9:00am

Visit most national parks, and you’ll see, read or hear about explorers, labor leaders or even some of the Native people whose homelands are part of park regions. But few of these stories, monuments or even trail signs feature women, especially Native women or other women of color, despite the roles women played in shaping the landscape and its uses.