About

Christopher S. Rose is a social historian of medicine, focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth century Middle East. He earned his doctorate in History from the University of Texas at Austin (UT) in 2019.

Effective fall 2022, he will be Assistant Professor of History at Our Lady of the Lake University (OLLU) in San Antonio, Texas. He previously taught in the School of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Saint Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, and for the Departments of History and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas. He was a postdoctoral fellow with the Institute for Historical Studies at UT for the 2019-20 year. Prior to pursuing his doctorate, he acquired nearly two decades of administrative experience at the University of Texas.

His monograph project, tentatively titled Home Front Egypt: Famine, Disease, and Death during the Great War, describes how price control systems intended to ensure an adequate supply of food for the Egyptian population during the World War I (1914-1918) were neutralized by requisitions of labor and foodstuffs, a situation that resulted in inflation, food shortages, and starvation among civilians. Using demographic and statistical data, he argues that malnutrition facilitated the rapid spread of disease throughout the country, killing more people than military action. The ‘Spanish’ influenza pandemic alone claimed over 150,000 lives — over one percent of Egypt’s population — in the last two months of 1918 (an article about the pandemic in Egypt is forthcoming in the Journal of World History).

He is exploring the broader global colonial experience of the First World War for a second project. His other research interests include the formative period of Islam from Muhammad until the rise of the Umayyads; the history and development of Fustat/Cairo; Islamic North Africa and Spain (al-Andalus); and the spread of cultural traits outward from the Middle East through trade networks (Silk Route, Mediterranean, Atlantic).

Dr. Rose is active as a public historian. He is a cohost of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies channel, part of the New Books podcast network. He was also a founding co-host of the podcast 15 Minute History for eight years, and is currently immediate past-president (2018 – 2022) of the Middle East Outreach Council. Chris also has significant experience in educator training, particularly working with world history and world geography educators. He has conducted numerous professional development sessions for educators, co-written several curriculum units for K-12 classrooms, and escorted numerous groups of educators to the Middle East.