Mary Ann Heiss

A life-long Ohioan, I grew up in Lake County and was educated at Miami University in Oxford (B.A. and M.A.) and The Ohio State University (Ph.D.).

I’m a specialist in the history of US foreign relations with a particular emphasis on Anglo-American relations.  My publications include Fulfilling the Sacred Trust: The UN Campaign for International Accountability for Dependent Territories during the Era of Decolonization (Cornell University Press, 2020), which won the 2021 Ohio Academy of History Publication Award, and Empire and Nationhood: The United States, Great Britain, and Iranian Oil, 1950-1954  (Columbia University Press, 1997); co-edited volumes on the recent history/future of NATO, US relations with the Third World, and intrabloc conflicts within NATO and the Warsaw Pact; and numerous essays in edited collections and professional journals, including the International History Review, the Journal of Cold War Studies, and Diplomatic History.  My current research projects include a study of Anglo-American visions of empire in the period 1945-1956, a comprehensive history of Cold War presidential doctrines, and the first extended study of Queen Mary’s Carpet.

I’ve been actively involved in the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, having served on its Council and on the editorial board of its journal, Diplomatic History.  I served as SHAFR President from 2022-2023. I’ve also been a member of the Harry S. Truman Library Institute’s Committee on Research Scholarship and Academic Relations and its Board of Directors.  I’m a past President of the Ohio Academy of History and currently serve as its Archivist.

Here at Kent State, I teach courses in the history of America and the world, the Global Cold War, and the Twentieth-Century World.