Julia Irwin
T. Harry Williams Professor of History
225-A Himes Hall
Courses Taught
World History since 1500 (introductory survey)
Pandemics in World History (Honors seminar)
Diplomatic History of the United States, 1914 to the Present (upper-level survey)
The Global Cold War (upper-level survey)
Readings in 20th Century U.S. History (graduate seminar)
The U.S. and the 20th Century World (graduate seminar)
Current Research Interests
My research focuses on the place of humanitarian assistance in 20th century U.S. foreign relations and international history. My first major research project focused on the history of U.S. foreign relief efforts in the early 20th century, particularly during the First World War and its aftermath. In my second major research project, I explored the history and politics of U.S. foreign disaster assistance across the 20th century, with a focus on humanitarian emergencies caused by tropical storms, earthquakes, floods, and other natural hazards. Most recently, I completed a short book on the international history of humanitarianism, examining this concept in global perspective from the 18th century to the present.
I am currently working on a new book project, The Seventh Pandemic: Cholera, Humanitarianism, and Development in a Globalizing World, an international history of cholera and global health from the early 1960s through the early 1990s. I also serve as a founding co-editor of the book series InterConnections: The Global 20th Century and a founding co-editor of the Journal of Disaster Studies.
Interested in Directing Theses On
US foreign relations / US & the world
International humanitarianism, human rights, and development
Disasters
Histories of medicine and health
War & society
Education
PhD, Yale University, 2009
MPhil, Yale University, 2007
MA, Yale University, 2006
BA, Oberlin College, 2004
Awards and Honors
Tonous and Warda Johns Family Book Award (for Catastrophic Diplomacy), given by the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association (2025)
Stuart L. Bernath Lecture Prize, given by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (2020)
Roger D. Bridges Distinguished Service Award, given by the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2018)
Organization of American Historians (OAH) Distinguished Lecturer (2017–2026)
Betty M. Unterberger Dissertation Prize, given by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (2011)
Best Article Prize, Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2010)
Books
Humanitarianism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2026)
Catastrophic Diplomacy: US Foreign Disaster Assistance in the American Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2024)
Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening (Oxford University Press, 2013)
Journal Articles and Book Chapters
“Medicine, Science, and the Environment,” in Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, 4th edition, eds. Frank Costigliola and Barbara Keys (Cambridge University Press, 2025): 139–160.
“A First Responder to the World,” Modern American History 7 (2024): 87–91.
“Model Villages amidst the Ruins: Disaster Refugee Camps and Settlements as Functional Sites of Humanitarian Exhibition,” L’Humanitaire S’Exhibe (1867–2016), eds. Sébastien Farré, Jean-François Fayet, and Bertrand Taithe (Georg Editeur, 2022): 170–193.
“The Emergency Service: Evaluating the Role of Militaries in Humanitarian Operations, Disaster Relief, and Other Non-Conflict Crises,” Journal of Advanced Military Studies 13:1 (2022): 5–13.
Bernath Lecture: “Our Climatic Moment: Hazarding a History of the United States and the World,” Diplomatic History 45:3 (2021): 421–444.
“Humanitarianism and U.S. Foreign Assistance,” in The Cambridge History of America and the World, vol. 3, 1900–1945, eds. Brooke Blower and Andrew Preston (Cambridge University Press, 2021): 337–359.
“Disastrous Grand Strategy: U.S. Humanitarian Assistance and Global Natural Catastrophe,” in Rethinking American Grand Strategy, eds. Elizabeth Borgwardt, Christopher McKnight Nichols, and Andrew Preston (Oxford University Press, 2021): 366–383.
“On Disaster,” co-authored with Jenny Leigh Smith, Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society 111:1(2020): 98–103.
“The ‘Development’ of Humanitarian Relief: U.S. Disaster Assistance Operations in the Caribbean Basin, 1917–1931,” in The Development Century: A Global History, eds. Stephen Macekura and Erez Manela (Cambridge University Press, 2018): 40–60.
“The Origins of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance,” The American Historian 15 (2018): 43–49.
“Connected by Calamity: The United States, the League of Red Cross Societies, and Transnational Disaster Assistance after the First World War,” Moving the Social: Journal of Social History and the History of Social Movements 57 (2017): 57–76.
“The American Red Cross in Great War-Era Europe, 1914–1922,” The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville 38:2 (2017): 117–131.
“Raging Rivers and Propaganda Weevils: Transnational Disaster Relief, Cold War Politics, and the 1954 Danube and Elbe Floods,” Diplomatic History 40:5 (2016): 893–921.
“Beyond Versailles: Recovering the Voices of Nurses in Post-World War I U.S.-European Relations,” Nursing History Review 24 (2016): 12–40.
“Interchange: World War I,” Journal of American History 102:2 (2015): 463–499.
“The Disaster of War: American Conceptions of Catastrophe, Conflict, and Relief,” First World War Studies 5:1 (2014): 17–28.
“Taming Total War: Great War-Era American Humanitarianism and Its Legacies,” Diplomatic History 38:4 (2014): 763–775. Revised and expanded version in Beyond 1917: The United States and the Global Legacies of the Great War, eds. Thomas W. Zeiler, David K. Ekbladh, and Benjamin C. Montoya (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017): 122–139.
“Teaching ‘Americanism with a World Perspective’: The Junior Red Cross in the U.S. Schools from 1917 to the 1920s,” History of Education Quarterly 53:3 (2013): 255–279.
“The Great White Train: Typhus, Sanitation, and U.S. International Development during the Russian Civil War,” Endeavour 36:3 (2012): 89–96.
“‘Sauvons les Bébés’: Child Health and U.S. Humanitarian Aid in the First World War,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 86:1(2012): 37–65.
“Nurses Without Borders: The History of Nursing as U.S. International History,” Nursing History Review 19 (2011): 78–102.
“Nation Building and Rebuilding: The American Red Cross in Italy During the Great War,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 8:3 (2009): 407–439.
“An Epidemic without Enmity: Explaining the Missing Ethnic Tensions in New Haven’s 1918 Influenza Epidemic,” Urban History Review 36:2 (2008): 5–17.