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Department Head Mark Healey Receives Academic Leadership Award

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Staff Faculty

The annual CLAS Faculty and Staff Awards recognize outstanding achievement across several categories.

The Academic Leadership Award honors exemplary leadership by an individual who oversees a CLAS department, school, center, institute, or program. At this year’s CLAS Faculty and Staff Awards, Department Head Mark Healey was recognized for his leadership in strengthening departmental climate, transparency, and academic success. 

For the complete citation and list of award recipients, please see the UConn Today coverage at “CLAS Honors Faculty and Staff for Excellence in 2026.”

The Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era awards 2026 President’s Book Prize to Manisha Sinha for The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic

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he prize was awarded at the Organization of American Historians meeting in Philadelphia on April 17, 2026. The prize citation reads:

Following a multi-tiered selection process, the committee selected The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860–1920 by Manisha Sinha as the recipient of the SHGAPE President’s Book Prize.

 Manisha Sinha’s The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic offers a sweeping and compelling reinterpretation of Reconstruction, significantly expanding both the temporal and geographic boundaries traditionally associated with the period. Sinha provides a major new synthesis of Reconstruction scholarship—one that will stand alongside the seminal works of Eric Foner and W. E. B. Du Bois as a benchmark for a new generation of historians. The book will serve as a central text in graduate seminars on nineteenth-century U.S. history for years to come. Grounded in extensive archival research but driven by a clear and persuasive argument about the broader scope and significance of Reconstruction, it will shape how historians and their students understand this critical era. It is a powerful and important work and fully deserving of the SHGAPE President’s Book Prize.

“Let’s Talk: Navigating Hard Conversations on Campus” workshop for student leaders, a cooperative effort

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Participants in the four-hour retreat received a certificate upon completion of the event.
Participants in the four-hour retreat received a certificate upon completion of the event (contributed photo; UConn Today).

Students from an array of backgrounds came together at UConn Storrs on March 27 to do just that during the “Let’s Talk: Navigating Hard Conversations on Campus” retreat sponsored by UConn Hillel, the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute, and the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate. 

Edina Oestreicher, the executive director of UConn Hillel, said that she was invited to apply for a grant to create a “Campus Connections” initiative where student leaders gain the transferable skills of actively listening, asking meaningful questions, and practicing thoughtful communication with other leaders. With the grant, UConn Hillel partnered with the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute to host an interactive workshop facilitated by faculty affiliated with the “Democracy and Dialogues Initiative.”

History Professor Brendan Kane, co-director of the “Democracy & Dialogues” program, started thinking about creating a new dialogue model for respectful communication back in 2016. Kane wanted to engage scholars in meaningful and dynamic ways with community members, emphasizing UConn’s mission as a public university. Simultaneously, witnessing universities trying to implement spaces for dialogue after widespread incidents of racism occurred across campuses nationwide, Kane wanted to create a unique process to build strong and resilient communities. The “Democracy and Dialogues Initiative” is part of Dodd Human Rights Impact Programs.

For complete coverage of the event, please see the UConn Today article “Retreat Aims at Fostering Civil Dialogue in an Era of Polarization.”

Lucas Ruiz ’23, inaugural Fellow of Oppenheimer Project, advocates for nuclear policy dialogue

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As a recent transfer student from Connecticut State Community College, Lucas Ruiz ’23 pursued his interest in history through courses with professors Alexis Dudden and Frank Costigliola – a decision that set him on a path that would eventually lead to publishing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, becoming the first-ever Fellow with the Oppenheimer Project, and convening meetings of world experts on nuclear weapons policy.

Lucas Ruiz, class of 2023. Mr. Ruiz is a young man with brown hair in a blue suit and tie with a white shirt.

Now, as an Oppenheimer fellow, Ruiz analyzes the complex and often volatile relationship between China, Russia, and the U.S. by examining the leadership of each state.

“I think that the personalities and the individuals that lead these states are of paramount importance,” Ruiz says. “I have found that no two people have the exact same perception of the world. When thinking about how the United States can engage Russia, you have to think about how can the president of the United States engage the president of Russia?”

For the full article covering Lucas’ path through UConn to the Oppenheimer Project, please see UConn Today‘s “Alum Lucas Ruiz Examines Nuclear Policy Among Global Powers.”

Ken Burns-produced documentary “Henry David Thoreau” special screening April 8

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On Wednesday, April 8, the UConn Department of Earth Sciences, the Environmental Sciences Program, the Honors Program, the Humanities Institute, the Institute of the Environment and Energy, and the Office of Sustainability will host a special viewing of the new Ken Burns-produced documentary “Henry David Thoreau.” The viewing is open to all and will be followed by a discussion with producer Susan Shumaker, UConn Department of History Draper Professor Emeritus Robert Gross, and Department of Earth Sciences professor Robert Thorson, who served as experts for the documentary.

“The documentary repositions Thoreau, not as one of the dead white men of the old canon that we are shedding as we move forward, but reactivating him as a sensitive and self-aware scientist-writer,” Thorson says. “There’s no question that Thoreau lies at the foundation of two big ideas in America. One, through ‘Walden,’ is the root of the philosophical ascetic strand of the environmental movement, which is why Rachel Carson kept a copy on her nightstand for devotional reading.  The other, through ‘Civil Disobedience,’ is the root of nonviolent resistance to an unjust government. This essay, written about his night in jail, informed the approaches of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, who both read it when they were in jail. Many others were also inspired by it, from Leo Tolstoy to Emma Goldman, and many more.”

Please visit UConn Today‘s full article “Rebooting Thoreau for Modern Times: New PBS Documentary Features UConn Expertise.”

The Library Company of Philadelphia Honors Former Program of African American History Director Deirdre Cooper Owens

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Associate professor of history, Deidre Cooper Owens

Please join the Library Company of Philadelphia on April 17th for a conversation with Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens and Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson, moderated by Dr. Jim Downs.

Since its inauguration, the Program in African American History has expanded its efforts to collect, preserve, and interpret Black women’s experiences across centuries, continents, and legal statuses. This event honors the tremendous strides Deirdre Cooper Owens led on this journey, in her legacy as a former Director of the Program, and through her lasting impact in the field of Black women’s history.

The event will be held Friday, April 17th, 2026 at 5:30 PM at the Library Company in Philadelphia. For more information and to register for tickets, please visit The Library Company’s site.

This Is My Jail: Local Politics & the Rise of Mass Incarceration

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Melanie Newport, Author

University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022

While state and federal prisons like Attica and Alcatraz occupy a central place in the national consciousness, most incarceration in the United States occurs within the walls of local jails. In This Is My Jail, Melanie D. Newport situates the late twentieth-century escalation of mass incarceration in a longer history of racialized, politically repressive jailing. Centering the political actions of people until now overlooked—jailed people, wardens, corrections officers, sheriffs, and the countless community members who battled over the functions and impact of jails—Newport shows how local, grassroots contestation shaped the rise of the carceral state.

As ground zero for struggles over criminal justice reform, particularly in the latter half of the twentieth century, jails in Chicago and Cook County were models for jailers and advocates across the nation who aimed to redefine jails as institutions of benevolent transformation. From a slave sale on the jail steps to new jail buildings to electronic monitoring, from therapy to job training, these efforts further criminalized jailed people and diminished their capacity to organize for their civil rights. With prisoners as famous as Al Capone, Dick Gregory, and Harold Washington, and a place in culture ranging from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle to B. B. King’s Live in Cook County Jail, This Is My Jail places jails at the heart of twentieth-century urban life and politics.

As a sweeping history of urban incarceration, This Is My Jail shows that jails are critical sites of urban inequality that sustain the racist actions of the police and judges and exacerbate the harms wrought by housing discrimination, segregated schools, and inaccessible health care. Structured by liberal anti-Blackness and legacies of violence, today’s jails reflect longstanding local commitments to the unfreedom of poor people of color.

This Is My Jail book cover