Christopher Nichols

Christopher McKnight Nichols is Professor of History and Wayne Woodrow Hayes Chair in National Security Studies, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, at The Ohio State University.

Author or editor of six books including most recently Ideology in U.S. Foreign Relations: New Histories (Columbia UP, 2022) and Rethinking American Grand Strategy (Oxford UP, 2021), Nichols is most well known for his book Promise and Peril: America at the Dawn of a Global Age (Harvard UP, 2011, 2015). Nichols specializes in the history of the United States and its relationship to the rest of the world, particularly in the areas of isolationism, internationalism, and globalization, as well as the role of ideas and ideologies in U.S. foreign relations. He is also an expert on modern U.S. intellectual, political, and cultural history, from the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (1880-1920) through the present.

Areas of Expertise

Intellectual history of the U.S.'s role in and with the world
Isolationism, internationalism, globalization
U.S. and the World, nineteenth century to the present
Intersection of U.S. domestic and foreign policy
Grand Strategy, Ideology, Anti-imperialism
Gilded Age and Progressive Era
1918-19 Influenza Pandemic
U.S. political history, party politics, elections
Modern U.S. history, modern international history