Julia Irwin

Fields of Expertise

Biography

Julia Irwin is the T. Harry Williams Professor of History at Louisiana State University. She earned her Ph.D. in History, with a concentration in the History of Medicine and Science, from Yale University. Her research focuses on the place of humanitarian assistance in 20th century U.S. foreign relations and international history. Her first book, Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening (Oxford University Press, 2013) is a history of U.S. international relief efforts during the First World War era. Her second book, Catastrophic Diplomacy: U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance in the American Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2024), is a history of U.S. foreign disaster assistance and emergency relief during the 20th century. She is currently writing Humanitarianism: A Very Short Introduction, a sweeping overview of the history of international humanitarianism over the last three centuries (forthcoming with Oxford University Press). She is a founding co-editor of the book series InterConnections: The Global 20th Century, published by University of North Carolina Press, and a founding co-editor of Journal of Disaster Studies, published by University of Pennsylvania Press.

Bibliography

Monographs

  • Catastrophic Diplomacy: U.S. 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).

 

Current Editing Projects

  • Founding co-editor of InterConnections: The Global 20th Century, a book series on international and transnational history published by the University of North Carolina Press (2024–present).
  • Founding co-editor of Journal of Disaster Studies, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press (2022–present).

 

Journal Articles and Book Chapters (peer-reviewed)

  • “A First Responder to the World,” Modern American History 7:1 (2024): 87–91.
  • “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.
  • “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.
  • “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.
  • “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.

 

Invited Academic Journal Articles and Book Chapters (non-refereed)

  • “Journal of Disaster Studies: An Inaugural Discussion,” co-author with Ksenia Chmutina, Kim Fortun, et. al., Journal of Disaster Studies 1:1 (2024): 5–22.
  • “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,” invited introduction to the special issue “Military Response to Natural Disasters and National Emergencies,” Journal of Advanced Military Studies 13:1 (2022): 5–13.
  • “Comment: Towards a History of Health Care: Repositioning the Histories of Nursing and Medicine,” invited essay on Patricia D’Antonio’s “Positioning Paper,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 96:3 (2022): 314–320.
  • 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.
  • “The Origins of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance,” The American Historian 15 (2018): 43–49.
  • “The American Red Cross in Great War-Era Europe, 1914–1922,” The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville 38:2 (2017): 117–131.
  • “Interchange: World War I,” Journal of American History 102:2 (2015): 463–499.

 

Works in Progress

  • Humanitarianism: A Very Short Introduction (under contract with Oxford University Press).
  • “Medicine, Science, and the Environment,” (contribution to Frank Costigliola and Barbara Keys, Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, 4th edition).
  • “The New Great White Fleet: Hospital Ships and U.S. Humanitarian Power in the Cold War Era,” (contribution to the volume Military Humanitarianism: Reimagining the Nexus Between Aid Operations and Armed Forces, edited by Brian Drohan and Margot Tudor).