Faculty
The faculty and staff in the history department at the University of Minnesota are deeply committed to instilling in students an appreciation for and understanding of the past. The approximately forty full-time faculty have varied academic backgrounds and possess diverse and interdisciplinary research interests.
The department also draws upon visiting lecturers and scholars who bring their expertise in many areas of study. Our graduate students come from all over the world and occupy a unique position as both students and graduate assistants/instructors who bring their diverse research interests to their teaching. Furthermore, the staff members in the department offer many years of experience at the University of Minnesota, provide professional support to faculty and students and keep the department running smoothly. Together faculty, graduate students, and staff are dedicated to providing students with the support they need to learn and excel in today's complex world.
Regular Faculty
Sarah C. Chambers
Specialties
Andean region; Colonial Latin American history; Cultural and legal history; Transition between the end of the colonial period and the formation of republican nations; Gender history; Chile
David Aiona Chang
Specialties
Indigenous History; Native Hawaiian History; Indigenous Studies; U.S. West; United States Colonialism; Race and Nationalism; United States, Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century History
Anna Clark
Specialties
Irish history; history of sexuality; gender analysis; British and European history; The British Empire; history of women
Tracey Deutsch
Specialties
Consumption and consumerism; Women's and gender history; History of capitalism; Food studies
Gail Dubrow
Specialties
Asian American History; Public History; Historic Preservation; U.S. Urban History; U.S. Women’s History
Kirsten Fischer
Specialties
US social and intellectual history; Colonial and Revolutionary America; Women, gender, and sexuality in early America; Race and racial ideologies in early America; American Religious History; Cultural encounters in early America
Sheer Ganor
Specialties
German-Jewish History; Displacement and forced migration; History and Memory; Diaspora Studies; Holocaust and Genocide Studies; Modern Germany
Katharine Gerbner
Specialties
Atlantic World; Early American History; Religion; Comparative Early Modern History; History of Race; Global Christianity
J. David Hacker
Specialties
Historical Demography; Quantitative History; American Civil War
Aaron Hall
Specialties
Legal history; American constitutional law and culture; slavery in British America and the United States; history of the state and governance; the Early Republic and Civil War Era
Allen Isaacman
Specialties
Agrarian change; Central and Southern Africa; Comparative history; Peasants; Rural protest; Slavery and maroon communities; Social history of Mozambique; The agency of ordinary people; The nature of African resistance to European colonial domination; Oral history; East Africa and problems in southern Africa; Racial problems in southern Africa
Christopher Isett
Specialties
Comparative History and Historical Sociology; The Political Economies of Post-War East Asia: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China; Late Imperial and Modern Chinese Economic, Social, Legal and Political History; Agrarian History and Agricultural Change; The History of Global Capitalism; The Global Cold War; Post-War Global Capitalism; History and Debates on the Transition to Capitalism; Marxism; Comparative Economic History
William Jones
Specialties
Civil Rights Movement; African Americans; 20th-century United States; Unions/Organized Labor
Mai Na Lee
Specialties
Southeast Asia; Southeast Asian American/Hmong communities; Highland Southeast Asian Studies
Malinda Lindquist
Specialties
African-American history; U.S. history; Gender History; Intellectual History
Michael Lower
Specialties
The Crusades; North Africa; Medieval Mediterranean; Sports History; Jewish History
Saje Mathieu
Specialties
African American History since Reconstruction; Immigration, Social Movements and Political Resistance; U. S. History, 1865 to the Present; World War One; Race and Sport; Black/African Diaspora Studies
Mary Jo Maynes
Specialties
European social history; France; Germany; History of female labor in European textile industries; History of the family; Ireland; Women; Personal narratives; Autobiography; The family in global history; History of childhood, youth, girlhood
Patrick McNamara
Specialties
Comparative Revolutions; Cognitive History; History and Memory; Human Rights; El Salvador; Drug Violence in the Americas; Mexico
Hiromi Mizuno
Specialties
modern Japan & Asia; science and technology; empires, post-empire, the Cold War; intellectual and cultural history; environment and agriculture; soil, fertilizer, nitrogen; human rights and international laws
Kevin P. Murphy
Specialties
History of sexuality; Heritage studies and public history; Comparative history of women and gender; United States history; Cultural and intellectual history; Urban history
Jean O'Brien
Specialties
Native American and Indigenous Studies; State and Federal Recogntion; Settler Colonial Studies; US Colonialism
Zozan Pehlivan
Specialties
Environmental History; History of Violence; Comparative Empires; Pastoral Nomadism; Ottoman Empire; Kurdistan
Kathryn Reyerson
Specialties
Social and economic history; Medieval France; Mediterranean World; Medieval Europe; Legal history; World History
Steven Ruggles
Specialties
U. S. census research; U. S. social history; Historical demography; History of the family
Daniel Schroeter
Specialties
Muslim-Jewish Relations; Jewish history of North Africa and the Western Mediterranean, early-modern to modern; Moroccan history; Colonialism and the Jews in the Middle East and North Africa; Holocaust Studies; History of Israel and Palestine
JB Shank
Specialties
European Intellectual and Cultural History; The Cultural History of Modern Science; European Thought and Culture before 1850; The "Scientific Revolution," Enlightenment Science, and Newtonianism; Old Regime Society, especially in France and Italy; The History of Silicon Valley
Ajay Skaria
Specialties
intellectual/conceptual/philosophical history; Democracies and the minor; 19th- and 20th-century caste politics; 19th- and 20th-century Hinduism; Gandhi; Ambedkar; 19th- and 20th-century adivasi religious movements; Historical theory/political theory; Academic Freedom
Theofanis Stavrou
Specialties
modern Greece; modern Balkan and Greek-Slavic relations; Eastern Orthodoxy; Modern Greek studies; religious history in modern Russia; Russian history; Russian and Ottoman empires
Andrea Sterk
Specialties
Late antiquity; Ancient and medieval Christianity; Byzantium
Igor Tchoukarine
Specialties
Modern Europe; Central and Southeastern Europe; Travel and Tourism
Ann Waltner
Specialties
ritual; law; religion; traditional Chinese social history; gender; analysis of historical documentation; rumor; gossip; chinese history; world history; feminism
Barbara Welke
Specialties
American Legal and Constitutional History; U. S. Women's History; Modern U. S. History
Thomas Wolfe
Specialties
history of media and communications; pragmatism; European Union; Soviet Union
Postdoctoral
Benjamin Hansen
Specialties
Late Antiquity, Early Christianity, Early Islam, Medieval Middle East
Visiting Faculty
Affiliate Faculty
Brenda Child
Specialties
American Indian history; Public History and Museums; Ojibwe People of the Great Lakes; American Indian Women and Labor; The History of American Indian Education
Vicente M. Diaz
Nick Estes
Specialties
Oceti Sakowin studies; American Indian history; Indigenous social movements; Environmental justice; Federal Indian law and policy; Indigenous oral history
Alice Lovejoy
Specialties
Film and media history and historiography; East European film, literature, and cultural history; Nonfiction and experimental film and literature; Geopolitics and political economy of media; Media technologies and materials; Transnational media histories; Film criticism and filmmaking
Nabil Matar
Specialties
Arab-Islamic civilization; Seventeenth-Century English Religious literature; Arabic and European travel literature; Captivity Literature; Euro-Islamic contacts (early modern)
Keith Mayes
Specialties
Kwanzaa and Black holidays; Civil Rights and Black Power Movement; African-American History, 19th and 20th century; Black History and Educational Policy; African American Public History
Stuart McLean
Specialties
Philosophical anthropology; Experimental writing; Anthropology of Art; North Atlantic region; Landscape and environment
Karen Painter
Specialties
music and politics, music criticism, Jewish studies, social history, German and Austrian history, implicit bias and racism, and Chinese music
Jimmy Patino
Specialties
Race/Class/Gender; Chicano/a and Latino/a History, Culture and Politics; Immigration and the U.S.-Mexico Border; Latino/a Civil Rights and the Chicano/a Movement; African American and Latino/a Relations
Eva von Dassow
Specialties
History of the ancient Near East; Hurrian language and literature; Syro-Mesopotamian society and politics
John Watkins
Specialties
historiography; sovereignty and queenship; medieval and early modern diplomacy; premodern political culture; classical and medieval origins of the Renaissance; Mediterranean Studies
Melanie Yazzie
Specialties
Indigenous feminist and queer studies; American Indian history and historiography; Diné/Navajo studies; Social and political theory; Political ecology and environmental studies; Social and political movements; Urban Native studies; Policing and carcerality; Media studies
Emeriti Faculty
Iraj Bashiri
Specialties
Afghanistan; Central Asian studies; communism; Intellectual history, religion and ideology of Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan; Iranian linguistics and literature; Islam; Middle East; Persian; Sadeq Hedayat; Tajik-Uzbek conflict; Taliban; Firdowsi and His Shahnameh; Islam and the West
Gary Cohen
Specialties
Central and Eastern Europe, 1740-1939; Austria and Germany, 1790-1939; modern European social and political history; modern European Jewish history; ethnic minorities in modern Europe
John Evans
Specialties
ancient history; political elite of the first and second centuries A.D.; Roman history
Carol Hakim
Specialties
Nationalism and intellectual history; State formation, state-society relations, and authoritarianism in the Arab world; Political and economic development of the Arab world in the late 19th- and 20th-centuries
Patricia Lorcin
Specialties
Race and Racial ideology in France and its colonies; Women and Gender in European colonies; Modern France and French imperialism; Western Imperialism, Colonialism, Post-colonial Studies
Elaine May
Specialties
The Cold War era; gender, sexuality, politics; 20th-century United States history
Lisa Norling
Specialties
maritime history; women's history; gender and class in early America; 18th and 19th-century America; 18th century Atlantic World
Carla Rahn Phillips
Specialties
Spanish maritime and naval history; Spain 1492-1800; History of Europe, 1300-1800; European Exploration, 1492-1800; European economy and society 1350-1750
William Phillips
Specialties
early modern European history; European expansion; history of Spain; Medieval Europe
Liping Wang
Specialties
East Asian history; Imperial China; modern Chinese social and cultural history; Republican China; travel