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Chris Foss

Chris Foss received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2016. He is the most recent recipient of the Charles Gates Award, for best article in Pacific Northwest Quarterly; and the Donald J. Sterling Senior Fellowship from the Oregon Historical Society, to support future archival research. He teaches at Tokyo International University of America, and has also taught at Willamette University, University of Portland, and Washington State University Vancouver. His main research interests include the global Pacific Northwest, regional politics, and U.S. foreign relations during the Cold War. His book, Facing the World: Defense Spending and International Trade in the Pacific Northwest Since World War II, was published in 2020 by Oregon State University Press. Foss contributed a chapter to the edited volume The Cold War at Home and Abroad: Domestic Politics and US Foreign Policy Since World War II (University of Kentucky Press, 2018) and has written articles in Oregon Historical Quarterly, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, and Passport: The Magazine of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. His current project is a manuscript about the life and career of Oregon Rep. Edith Green.

Author's Entries

  • Albert Conrad "Al" Ullman (1914-1986)

    Albert Conrad "Al" Ullman, the U.S. representative from Oregon’s Second Congressional District from 1957 to 1980, was one of the state’s most effective elected officials in the post-World War II era. Initially a New Dealer in the mold of President Franklin Roosevelt, he gained a reputation as a socially liberal …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Hermiston

    At the turn of the twentieth century, the area that would become Hermiston was a hilly, sagebrush-covered desert, but boosters in Pendleton, about thirty miles to the southeast, believed the land could be transformed. The 1902 Reclamation Act was funding irrigation projects in the West, and Horace Greely Skinner …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Milton-Freewater

    Milton-Freewater, a city of about 7,000 people, is located at the foot of the Blue Mountains in northeast Oregon. Seven miles from the Oregon-Washington state line, Milton-Freewater is situated in the Walla Walla Valley, just ten miles from Walla Walla. Farmers in the area benefit from the area’s warm summers …

    Oregon Encyclopedia