History Affiliate Faculty

Patricia Aufderheide University Professor SOC | Communication Studies

Patricia Aufderheide is University Professor of Communication Studies in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C. She founded the School's Center for Media & Social Impac

  paufder@american.edu

  (202) 885-2069

Philip Brenner Prof Emeritus

Dr. Philip Brenner has published widely on U.S./Cuba relations, U.S./Latin American relations, contemporary U.S. foreign policy, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. His most recent book is Cuba Libre: A

  (202) 885-1605

Bill Davies Associate Professor and Department Chair, Justice Law & Criminology SPA | Justice, Law & Criminology

Dr. Davies is a historian of the European Union's constitutional and legal system. Dr. Davies teaches courses such as JLC-110 Western Legal Traditions and JLC-411 Great Trials in Legal History.

  davies@american.edu

  (202) 885-2319

Michelle Egan Professor SIS | Politics, Governance & Economics

Professor Michelle Egan focuses on comparative politics and political economy. She works on Europe and the United States, with a focus on issues of federalism, trade, governance and law. She is curren

  megan@american.edu

  (202) 885-1764

Helen Langa Associate Professor CAS - Art

Professor Helen Langa  (now retired) taught a sequence of courses on American Art from the colonial era to the late 20th century with an emphasis on issues related to national identity, politics, race

  hlanga@american.edu

  (202) 885-1682

Sarah Snyder Professor SIS | Global Inquiry

Sarah B. Snyder is a historian who specializes in the influence of nonstate actors such as human rights activists and expatriates on U.S. foreign relations. She is the author of From Selma to Mosco

  ssnyder@american.edu

  (202) 885-6587

Leonard Steinhorn Professor SOC | Public Communication

Leonard Steinhorn is a professor of Communication and an affiliate professor of History. His expertise includes American politics, culture and media; the presidency and presidential elections; politic

  lsteinh@american.edu

  (202) 885-2031

Rodger Streitmatter Prof Emeritus

Rodger Streitmatter is a full-time professor of Journalism. A cultural historian, he is a leader in exploring how the media have helped to shape the way Americans think and act. The most recent of his

  rstreit@american.edu

Quansheng Zhao Professor SIS | Foreign Policy & Global Security

Dr. Quansheng Zhao is Professor of international relations and Chair of Asian Studies Research Council at American University, serving as Director of the Division of Comparative and Regional Studies f

  zhao@american.edu

  (202) 885-1662

Washington College of Law Faculty

In Residence Faculty

Dan Arbell Scholar-in-Residence CAS | History

Dan Arbell, a scholar-in-residence at the Center for Israeli Studies at AU, is a 25 year veteran of the Israeli Foreign Service, serving in senior posts overseas in the UN, the US and Japan, and holdi

  arbell@american.edu

Albert Beveridge Historian in Residence

Albert Beveridge has been an attorney in Washington, DC for 45 years. After a series of legal positions, including three years in the Department of Justice, he established his own firm, Beveridge & Di

  beveridg@american.edu

Michelle Engert Senior Scholar in Residence SPA | Justice, Law & Criminology

Michelle Engert joined JLC as a full-time faculty member of JLC after a diverse career as a trial attorney and as a policy advisor. Michelle began her legal career as a trial attorney with the New Mex

  engert@american.edu

Johanna Neuman Scholar in Residence

Johanna Neuman is an independent scholar whose research focuses on women’s history. A former journalist and author, she graduated with a PhD in history from American University in 2016. Her first acad

  jn6911a@american.edu

Emerita/us Faculty

Robert L. Beisner

University of Chicago

A historian of American foreign relations, Professor Beisner taught at American University for thirty years. He is the author of Twelve against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists 1898-1900 and From the Old Diplomacy to the New, 1865-1900 and the winner of the Nevins and Dunning Prizes. Beisner was editor in chief of the two-volume bibliographic Guide to the Foreign Relations of the United States (2nd edition). He has also just published Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War.

Richard Breitman
Harvard University

A member of the faculty for over thirty years, Professor Breitman is a Distinguished Professor of German History and the Holocaust. He is the author or co-author of ten books and many articles in German History, U.S. History, and the Holocaust. Apart from his latest book, FDR and the Jews, co-authored with Allan J. Lichtman, he is best know for The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (Knopf 1991) and Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew (Hill and Wang, 1998). He served as director of historical research for the Nazi War Criminal Records and Imperial Japanese Records Interagency Working Group, which helped to bring about declassification of more than eight million pages of U.S. Government records under a 1998 law. He is editor of the scholarly journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Roger H. Brown

Harvard University

A member of the active faculty for over thirty years, Professor Brown is a historian of early America whose books include Republic in Peril: 1812 and Redeeming the Republic: Federalists, Taxation, and the Origins of the Constitution. He founded the university's Friends of the AU Library and still teaches courses on early America.

Ira Klein

Columbia University

After growing up in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, Professor Klein earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. at Columbia University, where he also wrote key articles for the Columbia Encyclopedia, a light history of early modern Europe, and taught at Queens College. He spent three years in England and one in India doing research. In London, he was a founding member of the Campaign against Racial Discrimination. His many other writings include articles on development, environment, and health. At American University, he helped develop the Honors Program and a community service-learning program and dorm floor.

James A Malloy

Ohio State University

A historian of Russia and Eastern Europe, Professor Malloy's early research on the Zemstrov Reform in Tsarist Russia led to a series of important journal articles. Much of his later work focused on U.S.-Soviet space exploration, including a monograph, U.S.-U.S.S.R. Space Negotiations and Cooperation, 1958-1965. For almost two decades, Professor Malloy advised and led American University's chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the history honorary.

Bernice Johnson Reagon

Howard University

A historian of African American history and culture, Professor Reagon has published many books and articles, including We'll Understand It Better By and By: Pioneering African-American Gospel Composers; Black People and their Culture: Selected Writings from the African Diaspora; We Who Believe in Freedom: Sweet Honey in the Rock, Still on the Journey; and You Don't Go, Don't Hinder Me: The African American Sacred Song Tradition. She is the artistic director of Sweet Honey of the Rock, the renowned and Emmy-nominated African-American women's a cappella ensemble she founded in 1973. She is curator emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution and has won the Charles E. Frankel prize; the Presidential Medal; the George F. Peabody Award for the radio series, Wade in the Water; and a MacArthur Fellowship.