Christopher McKnight Nichols
Christopher McKnight Nichols is an American historian. He is the Associate Professor of History in the School of History, Philosophy, and Religion at Oregon State University. Nichols founded the OSU Citizenship and Crisis Initiative in 2013 and has been Director of the Center for the Humanities at Oregon State since 2017. Career. Originally from New York City, New York, Nichols was educated at Harvard University, Wesleyan University, and the University of Virginia, where he received his PhD in History in 2008. He previously taught at the University of Virginia, where he was a fellow at the Institute  for Advanced Studies in Culture, and at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow. In 2014, he launched the Citizenship and Crisis Initiative at Oregon State University with an emphasis on issues at the intersection of citizenship, crisis, politics, international relations, civics, and engaged democracy, along with the centenary of World War I. He has appeared regularly on C-SPAN, and has been a frequent guest on public radio, on television, and on podcasts and blogs as a commentator on issues of U.S. foreign and domestic politics in historical perspective including the Washington Post , Foreign Policy, the Oregonian, the Huffington Post, the History News Network, Philosophy Talk (aired on NPR), etc. He is a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Oregon Historical Society and is a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was named Director of the Center for the Humanities at Oregon State University in 2017. That same year, Nichols became an Organization of American Historians (OAH) "Distinguished Lecturer". Nichols gave a TEDx TED Talk on April 21, 2018 at TEDxPortland, entitled “The Untold Story of American Isolationism” (aka “Why History Matters Today”). Research. Nichols’ research focuses on  the intellectual history of the United States’ role in the world from the Civil War period to the present, with an emphasis on isolationism, internationalism, and globalization. He is also a specialist on American political history and the intellectual and cultural history of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (1880-1920) through the present. Nichols is an advocate for the importance of history and the humanities in education and as a way to understand and address some of the most urgent contemporary problems. Nichols also has researched, written, and presented extensively on the 1918 flu pandemic, including publishing a roundtable  in the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2020) and doing a series of talks, including a presentation for C-SPAN to the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University (2020). Publications. Nichols is the author or editor of six books including: Awards. In 2015, Nichols received the Roger D. Bridges Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. He also received the OSU Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society “emerging scholar” of the year award for “outstanding research or creative activity.” Nichols was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2016 . Nichols was named Outstanding Professor of the Year by the Oregon State University Honor's College in 2014 and was named an Honors College Eminent Professor in 2021.