SMU Clements History

Jonathan Angulo, PhD 2023, recently published “The Transnational Informal Bracero Economy in the Imperial-Mexicali Borderlands, 1954-65,” in California History. Check it out!

Congratulations to our Ph.D. student, Holly Harris, on being accepted to the highly competitive 2026 Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) Summer Institute at The Ohio State University!
Selected from an exceptionally strong applicant pool, she will join leading scholars from across the country to explore “strategic cultures” through workshops, presentations, and collaborative discussions hosted by the Mershon Center for International Security Studies.
We are proud to see her hard work and scholarship recognized on a national stage. Please join us in celebrating this incredible achievement!

We enjoyed celebrating the accomplishments of our History students at the End of Year History Banquet. 🎓 Congratulations to our award winners, graduating seniors, newly inducted Phi Alpha Theta members, writers of distinction papers, and interns! Your dedication, scholarship, and passion for history make our community proud.

Congratulations to Isabelle Volfe for successfully completing her distinction paper, titled "Marie-Antoinette: The Making of L'Autrichienne in Revolutionary France."

Congratulations to Tristan Schimmel for successfully completing his distinction paper, titled "A Cautionary Tale: The Rise of The NSDAP in Weimar Germany."

Meet Our Majors: Senior Isabelle Volfe

From studying abroad in Rome and Paris to defending her 63-page thesis on Marie-Antoinette, Isabelle says majoring in history helped her build the critical thinking and research skills she’ll carry into law school.

Meet Our Majors Senior Femi Omotayo's love for History led her from writing a research paper on Queen Victoria to interviewing SMU alumni as part of the Voices of SMU Oral History Project — and this fall, she's headed to Washington, D.C. to pursue a career in US-Africa foreign policy. 🌍 We're so proud, Femi!

Associate professor Macabe Keliher published a path-breaking article in the Yale Journal of Law and Humanities on the transformation of the late imperial Chinese bureaucracy and how this helps explain the fate of early modern empires. The article, “Administrative Involution and the Fate of Premodern Empires: Bureaucracy, Paperwork, and Rebellion in Late Imperial China,” argues that an increase in administrative requirements and official paperwork in 18th century Qing China led to administrative involution, or more busy work without an increase in state capacity. This left the Qing unable to confront increasing internal and external pressures in the 19th and 20th centuries.

History Major Alondra Rosas, Class of 2026, presented research at the SMU Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute reception honoring the Jane and Jack Hamilton Undergraduate Research Scholars. Alondra works as a Hamilton Scholar Research Assistant on the Global Oral History of PEPFAR project, helping the team prepare for interviews with politicians, policy makers, medical professional and activists who helped to make the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in Africa possible.