Diana J. Montaño and Christina Ramos have been selected as Georgie W. Lewis Career Development Professors. Their endowed positions were made possible by a gift from alumna Georgie W. Lewis.
Diana J. Montaño and Christina Ramos, both faculty members in the Department of History, have been selected as Georgie W. Lewis Career Development Professors. The three-year endowed professorships recognize excellence in research and teaching as well as a strong record of professional service. This professorship differs from WashU’s other endowed professorships, which typically recognize the lifetime accomplishments of senior faculty. The Lewis Professors are intended for rising scholars, celebrating their achievements at a pivotal stage in their careers.
The endowed positions were made possible by a gift from Lewis, who graduated from Washington University in 1947 with a degree in liberal arts. Her gift was driven by her strong family ties to the university and to St. Louis, and she hopes that the succession of scholars who hold professorships in her name will make vital contributions to their fields of study while developing the leaders of tomorrow. In 2021, professors Douglas Flowe and Anika Walke were named the first Georgie W. Lewis Career Development Professors.
“Diana Montaño and Christina Ramos are very talented colleagues. Their scholarship in Latin American history and in the history of technology and medicine is important and field-defining,” said Corinna Treitel, the William Eliot Smith Professor of History, adding that both have been awarded multiple book and article prizes. “I look forward to many years of learning from them and am so happy to see them recognized for their accomplishments with this award.”
Montaño’s teaching and research center on the construction of modern Latin American societies with a focus on technology and its relationship to nationalism, everyday life, and domesticity.
Her first book, “Electrifying Mexico: Technology and the Transformation of a Modern City,” examines how the residents of Mexico City shaped electrification from the 1880s to the 1960s. It traces how ordinary citizens used electricity symbolically and physically to construct a modern nation. The book has received numerous awards, including the Bolton-Johnson Prize, the Turriano Prize, the Michael C. Meyer Award, the Urban History Association Prize, and the Alfred B. Thomas Award. It was also a finalist for the William and Joyce Middleton Electrical Engineering History Award and earned an honorable mention from the Latin American Studies Association.
Montaño, who earned her doctorate from the University of Arizona in 2014, joined WashU as a postdoctoral fellow that same year and later became an assistant professor in 2016. She served as a fellow at the Linda Hall Library, where she researched her second book, “Necaxa and the Engineering of a Mexican Energy Landscape,” which examines the transnational networks behind the Necaxa hydroelectric complex.
Montaño is co-editor of the University of Nebraska Press’ “Confluencias,” a series of books covering Mexican history. She also convenes the working group on Latin America for the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine.
Montaño is deeply honored and proud to be appointed as a Lewis Professor and humbled by the recognition of her work. She said that the position will be “instrumental” in propelling her research and helping maintain a strong commitment to high standards in teaching and professional service.
“As part of this professorship, I will work on my second monograph, which reassesses the role of hydropower in Mexico, raising important questions about the reengineering of nature in the creation of a new energy landscape at the dawn of the 20th century,” she said. “I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the donors whose generosity and commitment to the humanities, particularly history, have made this possible.”
Ramos studies the history of medicine and public health from the 16th to 18th centuries, looking at how empire, religion, and colonial institutions shaped ideas about health and illness. She centers her work on the Spanish empire, showing how medical knowledge, religious practice, and colonial authority intersected in institutions such as hospitals and in prevailing conceptions of disease.
In her first book, “Bedlam in the New World: A Mexican Madhouse in the Age of Enlightenment,” Ramos examined mental illness and institutional care at Mexico City’s Hospital de San Hipólito, the first hospital in the Americas for the mentally ill, which had ties to the Inquisition and criminal courts. She reconstructed the hospital’s history and the lives of its patients to offer a new history of madness during the Enlightenment. The book won several awards, including the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize, the Philip J. Pauly Prize, and the Cherion Book Prize. It was a finalist for the William H. Welch Medal.
Her current book project, tentatively titled “Nursing an Empire: Hospitals and Global Health in the Hispanic World,” explores how religious caregivers shaped medical practice and colonial expansion, showing nursing as both a compassionate act and a tool of empire.
Ramos earned her master’s degree in history from Duke University and her doctorate in the history of science from Harvard University in 2015. She joined WashU’s Department of History in 2016 and was promoted to associate professor in 2024.
Ramos is honored to be named a Lewis Professor. “Having come up through the ranks at WashU, it is especially rewarding to receive this award at such a pivotal moment in my career,” she said. “It will help me advance my second book, which shows how the intimate work of nursing was also a powerful engine of empire and global medicine. I am also especially pleased to share this honor alongside my colleague and good friend, Professor Montaño.”
About Georgie W. Lewis
Georgie Williams Lewis was born in St. Louis in 1922, the daughter of Eugene F. Williams, a prominent banker, and Marie Wight Williams. She attended boarding school at Foxcroft School in Virginia. She spent two summers as a teenager in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, where she sailed with Albert Einstein. She took classes at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, but ultimately earned her bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from Washington University in 1947. A lover of education, she also studied at WashU’s Brown School and at the University of Chicago before moving to Long Island, New York.
She has four children: Donald Meyer, Maria Meyer, William Meyer, and Polly Rowles. Her philanthropic endeavors include education, the arts, and youth services. She served on the boards of the Cold Spring Harbor and Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club, among others.
Lewis is a direct descendant of Pierre Laclede, who founded St. Louis with Auguste Chouteau around 1764. Her ancestry is deeply rooted in the community. She is from a branch of the Olin family, and her brother, the late Eugene F. Williams, Jr., was an integral part of founding the John M. Olin Business School. Her sister-in-law, the late Evelyn Williams, is a daughter of John M. Olin. Lewis has a passion for education and believes strongly in the value of studying the humanities, specifically history. In 2023, Lewis was named the Dean's Medal recipient at the Arts & Sciences’ Distinguished Alumni Awards.
