History Faculty
Jefferson Adams
Adda Bozeman Chair in International Relations
Courses: Espionage in the Twentieth Century, France and Germany in the Twentieth Century
B.A., Stanford University. Ph.D., Harvard University. Special interest in European political, diplomatic, and cultural history, with emphasis on modern Germany; visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace; editor and translator of Beyond the Wall: Memoirs of an East and West German Spy; chair, Intelligence Studies Section of the International Studies Association; member, American Council on Germany. SLC, 1971-
Ms. La Shonda Barnett
B.A., University of Missouri. M.A., Sarah Lawrence College. Ph.D. (ABD), The College of William and Mary. Currently completing dissertation entitled “I Got Thunder (And it Rings!): Afrodiasporic ‘Voicing’ in the Music of Abbey Lincoln, Nina Simone, and Cassandra Wilson.” Research interest in African American expressive culture, jazz studies, women’s history, and museum studies; contributor to the Journal of Black Music and Jazz Education Journal; author of a collection of short fiction, Callaloo. SLC, 2003-
David Bernstein
Courses: First-Year Studies: Religion and Art in the Making of Europe, Art and the Sacred in Late Antiquity and Medieval Europe, From the Catacombs to Chartres: A Research Seminar in Christian Iconography
B.A., Brandeis University. M.A., Ph.D., Harvard University. Special interest in the intellectual, social, and cultural history of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, with an emphasis on art and architecture; lecturer and essayist; author, The Mystery of the Bayeux Tapestry; recipient of grants from the American Philosophical Society, American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. SLC, 1969-
Persis Charles
Courses: 1919, Effort, Merit, Privilege
B.A., Bryn Mawr College. M.A., Brown University. Ph.D., Tufts University. Special interest in modern social and women’s history, with particular emphasis on British and French history. SLC, 1977-
Eileen Ka-May Cheng
Courses: The American Revolution and Its Legacy: The Making of American Nationalism, “Not by Fact Alone”: The Making of History
B.A., Harvard University. M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., Yale University. Author of articles and presentations on American intellectual and political history; special interest in nineteenth-century America. SLC, 1999-
Tai-Heng Cheng
Courses: Concepts of International Law and Human Rights: Their History and Contemporary Practice
B.A., M.A., Oxford University. LL.M., J.S.D., Yale Law School. Special interest in issues at the intersection of public and private international law, such as the international coordination of governments, corporations, and the media. Publications include State Succession and Commercial Obligations (Transnational Publishers, 2006); “Power, Authority, and International Investment Law” in American University International Law Review (2005); and “The Central Case Approach to Human Rights” in Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal (2004). Gave presentations on international law and global security at the U.S. House of Representatives and Yale Law School. Advised the Singapore police force and the U.N. Transitional Administration in East Timor. Associate professor, New York Law School, and associate director of its Center for International Law. SLC, 2006-
Mary Dillard
Courses: Public Stories, Private Lives: Methods of Oral History, Global Africa: Theories and Cultures of Diaspora
B.A., Stanford University. M.A., Ph.D., University of California-Los Angeles. Special interests include history of West Africa, particularly Ghana and Nigeria; history of intelligence testing and external examinations in Africa; history of science in Africa; and gender and education. Recipient of a Spencer fellowship and Major Cultures fellowship at Columbia University’s Society of Fellows in the Humanities. SLC, 2001-
Fawaz Gerges
The Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation Chair in Middle Eastern Studies and International Affairs
Courses: The Many Faces of Political Islam, From Nasser to bin Laden: Understanding Contemporary Arab Politics
M.A., London School of Economics and Political Science. D.Phil., Oxford University. Christian A. Johnson Chair in International Affairs and Middle Eastern Studies. Author of the recently published Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy (Harcourt Press, 2007) and The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (Cambridge University Press, 2005). The Washington Post selected The Far Enemy as one of the best 15 books published in the field. Journey of the Jihadist was on the best-selling list of Barnes & Noble and Foreign Affairs magazine. Special interests include Islam and the political process, social movements, and Arab and Muslim politics, among others. Taught at Oxford, Harvard, and Columbia universities; former research scholar at Princeton University. Recipient of MacArthur, Fulbright, and Carnegie fellowships. Books have been translated into a number of foreign languages. Articles and editorials have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. Frequently interviewed for various media outlets throughout the world, including ABC, CNN, and BBC, and Al Jazeera. Guest on The Charlie Rose Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Bill Moyers Journal, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, ABC News: Nightline, World News Tonight, This Week, Good Morning America, and other prominent shows. Senior ABC television news analyst from 2000 to 2006, when he left to reside in the Middle East as a Carnegie scholar. Recently returned from the Middle East after completing a fifteen-month field study in the region. Interviewed hundreds of civil society leaders, activists, and mainstream and radical Islamists in the Muslim world and within Muslim communities in Europe. Currently working on two books: Sayyid Qutb: Geneology of Revolutionary Islam (tentatively titled) and Understanding Arab Politics: From Nasser to Nasrallah. SLC, 1994-
Susan R. Kramer
Courses: First-Year Studies: Self and Society in Medieval Christendom, Women and the Church in Late Antiquity Through the Late Middle Ages, The Twelfth-Century Renaissance
A.B., Amherst College. J.D., University of Chicago. M.A., Ph.D., Columbia University. Special interest in the intellectual and cultural history of Europe from Late Antiquity through the High Middle Ages with particular emphases on the history of Christianity and medieval understandings of the self. Recent publications include “Understanding Contagion: The Contaminating Effect of Another’s Sin” in History in the Comic Mode, editors Rachel Fulton and Bruce Holsinger (2007), and “The Priest in the House of Conscience: Sins of Thought and the Twelfth-Century Schoolmen,” 37 Viator 2006. SLC, 2005-
Evelyn Leong
B.A., Pace University. M.A., Sarah Lawrence College. M.A., Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture. Special interests include women’s history, feminist studies, ethnic studies with an emphasis in Asian Americans, and the history of design with an emphasis in twentieth- century architecture and studio crafts. Recipient of the Bard Graduate Center Travel and Research grant and the American Ceramic Circle Research grant, 2006. SLC, 2005-
Laurie M. Mengel
B.A., University of California-Berkeley. M.A., Brown University. Ph.D. candidate, Brown University. Currently completing a dissertation entitled “Beyond Picture Brides: Issei Women, Labor, Marriage, and Divorce”; has been a contributor to Social Process in Hawai’i, Books and Culture, and editorial assistant for Radical Philosophy Review; SSRC International Migration Fellow and a fellow for the Center of the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University; research interests include the intersections of race, class, and gender formations through Asian American Pacific Islander histories, comparative ethnic studies, transnational migrations, and racial mixtures. SLC, 2005-
Viviane Meunier
Graduate of the University of Paris II-Panthéon-Assas, France. LL.M., Yale Law School. Special interests in international environmental law. Currently J.S.D. candidate and Tutor in Law at Yale Law School. Served as a law clerk at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands. Practiced before the Cour de cassation in Paris, France. Advised the French ambassador in Japan. Taught in the Master of International and European Law at the University of Toulouse, France. SLC, 2008-
Jason Mohaghegh
B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Columbia University. Special interests include modern Iranian cultural, intellectual, and political history; comparative literature; and avant-garde philosophies of East and West. Taught at Columbia University, Hofstra University, and the New School. Current research focuses on comparing radical intellectual formations in contemporary Middle Eastern and Western history and also on theorizing the relationship between the writing act (literary, philosophical, critical) and society. Forthcoming book, The Chaotic Imagination: Persian Literature and Western Thought in Alliance. SLC, 2006-
Priscilla Murolo
Director, Graduate Program in Women's History/History
B.A., Sarah Lawrence College. M.A., Ph.D., Yale University. Special interest in U.S. labor, women’s, and social history; author, The Common Ground of Womanhood: Class, Gender, and Working Girls’ Clubs; co-author, From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend: A Short, Illustrated History of Labor in the United States; contributor to various encyclopedias and anthologies and to educational projects sponsored by labor and community organizations; reviewer for Journal of American History, Journal of Urban History, International Labor and Working Class History, and other historical journals; contributor and editorial associate, Radical History Review; recipient of Hewlett-Mellon grants. SLC, 1988-
Mr. Jorge Nallim
B.A., Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. M.A., Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh. Special interests in Latin American history, comparative political culture, social history, ideological and cultural history, Latin American revolutions; recipient of scholarships and grants from Fulbright, Mellon, and the Center for Latin American Studies (University of Pittsburgh); author of articles in Cuadernos Americanos (Mexico) and Prismas (Argentina, forthcoming); co-author (with Shirley Kregar) of After Latin American Studies: A Guide to Graduate Study and Employment for Latin Americanists (Pittsburgh: CLAS, 2000); co-organizer of the conference "Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century Argentina and Latin America" (Universidad de San Andrés, Buenos Aires, 2000); visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh's History Department, 2002- 2003. Currently working on a manuscript on Argentine liberalism in the twentieth century. SLC, 2003-Mary Reynolds
Courses: Sisters in Struggle: Women and U.S. Social Movements in the Twentieth Century
B.A., Fairfield University. M.A., Sarah Lawrence College. M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. candidate, Yale University. Special interest in women’s history, U.S. labor history, radical movements, and imperialism. Currently completing a dissertation on the role of ethnic and racial identity in the development of feminist, anticolonialist, and radical politics. This collective biography of Claudia Jones, Emma Tenayuca, Dorothy Healey, and Ah Quon McElrath examines the political and social structures that formed these revolutionary female subjects and shaped their activism. Awards include the Gerda Lerner Prize (SLC), John F. Enders fellowship (Yale), and Dissertation Writing fellowship (Yale). SLC, 2007-
Lyde Cullen Sizer
Courses: First-Year Studies: Readings in U.S. Cultural and Intellectual History, Visions/Revisions: Issues in U.S. Women’s History
B.A., Yale University. M.A., Ph.D., Brown University. Special interests include the political work of literature, especially around questions of gender and race, U.S. cultural and intellectual history of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the social and cultural history of the U.S. Civil War. Book The Political Work of Northern Women Writers and the American Civil War, 1850-1872, won the Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians. The Civil War Era: An Anthology of Sources, edited with Jim Cullen, was published in 2005; book chapters are included in Love, Sex, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History; Divided Houses: Gender and the American Civil War; and A Search for Equity. SLC, 1994-
Philip Swoboda
Courses: From Baroque to Romanticism: The Winding Course of the European Enlightenment, Modern Russia
B.A., Wesleyan University. M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., Columbia University. Previously taught at Columbia, Hunter College, Lafayette College, University of Wisconsin-Madison; special interest in the religious and intellectual history of early modern Europe, and in the history of Eastern Europe, particularly Russia and Poland; author of articles on early twentieth-century Russian philosophy and religious thought; served on the executive committee of the Mid-Atlantic Slavic Conference. SLC, 2004-
Gina Luria Walker
Courses: The World’s Women During the Enlightenment
B.A., Barnard College. M.A., Columbia University. Ph.D., New York University. Special interests in the history of the learned woman; women’s global history; Enlightenment feminisms; the “regendering” of history; gender and genre; the history of toleration. Publications include The Feminist Controversy in England 1788-1810; “Mary Hays: An Enlightened Quest” in Women, Gender, and Enlightenment, A Comparative History; Mary Hays (1759-1843): The Growth of a Woman’s Mind; The Idea of Being Free: A Mary Hays Reader; “‘Can Man Be Free/And Woman Be a Slave?’ Teaching Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Women Writers in Intersecting Communities” in Teaching British Women Writers 1750-1900; the first modern scholarly edition of Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (co-editor); and Rational Passions: Women and Scholarship in Britain 1702-1870, A Reader (co-editor), forthcoming. Research associate, Gender and Enlightenment Project. SLC, 2007-
Pauline Moffitt Watts
Dean of the college
B.A., Sarah Lawrence College. Ph.D., University of Michigan. Recipient of fellowships from the American Academy in Rome and Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, the John Carter Brown Library, and the American Council of Learned Societies; author and editor of books and articles on medieval and Renaissance intellectual and religious history; cross-cultural contacts in sixteenth-century Mexico. SLC, 1985-
Komozi Woodard
Courses: Women in the Black Revolt: The Lecture, Urban Poverty and Public Policy in United States, Women in the Black Revolt: The Seminar
B.A., Dickinson College. M.A., Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania. Special interests in African American history, politics, and culture, with emphasis on the black freedom movement—particularly women in the Black Revolt, in U.S. urban and ethnic history and dynamics of urban migration and renaissance, public policy and persistent poverty, in oral history, and in the experience of anti-colonial movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Author of A Nation Within a Nation: Amiri Baraka and Black Power Politics and a number of reviews, chapters, and essays in journals, anthologies, and encyclopedia. Editor, The Black Power Movement, Part I: Amiri Baraka, from Black Arts to Black Radicalism; Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South; Groundwork: Local Black Freedom Movements in America; Women in the Black Revolt. Former news editor; former fellow at the Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research at Northwestern University; reviewer for American Council of Learned Societies; adviser to the Algebra Project and PBS documentaries Eyes on the Prize II and America’s War on Poverty. Board of Directors of the Urban History Association. SLC, 1989-
Matilde Zimmermann
on leave yearlong
Courses: The Caribbean and the Atlantic World, Harvest! Land, Labor, and Natural Resources in Latin American History
B.A., Radcliffe College. M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh. Special interest in the Nicaraguan and Cuban revolutions, Che Guevara’s life and writings, labor and social movements, Atlantic history and the African diaspora in the Caribbean and Latin America, history of Latinos/as in the U.S., environmental history. Director study-abroad program in Havana, Cuba. Author, Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan Revolution (Duke, 2000); Carlos Fonseca y la revolución nicaragüense (Managua, 2003); Bajo las banderas de Che y de Sandino (Havana, 2004); A Revolução Nicaragüense (São Paulo, 2005); Comandante Carlos: La vida de Carlos Fonseca Amador (Caracas, 2008). SLC, 2002-