American Studies

Faculty and Professional Interests

Michael H. Cowan, Professor of American Studies and Literature
American cultural theory and history, history of American studies, symbolic expression in American life, urban cultural studies, American literary studies, studies in the institutional culture of higher education

John Dizikes, Emeritus

Marge Frantz, Emerita

A. Yvette Huginnie, Assistant Professor of American Studies
Race and class relations within western American history, U.S. labor and immigration history, and comparative ethnic studies

Ann M. Lane, Emerita

George Lipsitz, Professor of American Studies
Race, culture, and social identities; twentieth-century U.S. history; urban history and culture; and social movements

Eric Porter, Associate Professor of American Studies
Black cultural and intellectual history; U.S. cultural history and cultural studies; comparative ethnic studies; popular music and jazz studies; race, science, and technology

Catherine Ramirez, Assistant Professor of American Studies
Chicana and U.S. Latino literature, culture, and history; gender studies and feminist theory; visual culture and style politics; cultural studies; popular and urban youth cultures; speculative fiction, Afrofuturism, and Chicanafuturism; science, technology, race, and gender; theories and methods of American studies

Renya Ramirez, Assistant Professor of American Studies
Native American studies, Indian identity, Native Americans and anthropology, urban Indians, Native American women, cultural citizenship, expressive culture, and anti-racist education

Forrest G. Robinson, Professor of American Studies
Nineteenth- and 20th-century American literature, including Mark Twain, the American West, and popular culture; biography and American culture theory

Tricia Rose, Professor of American Studies
Twentieth-century African American culture, urban history, cultural politics, race and gender theory, race and sexuality

Judy Yung, Emerita

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David Henry Anthony III, Associate Professor of History
African and African-American history, art, music, literature, and cinema; Eastern and Southern Africa; African languages; Indian Ocean world; African and African American linkages; Islamic civilization; African diaspora studies; world history

Robert F. Berkhofer Jr., Emeritus

Michael K. Brown, Professor of Politics
American politics and public policy, the political development of welfare states, political economy, African American politics since the New Deal

David T. Brundage, Associate Professor of Community Studies
American working-class and immigration history, history of U.S. social movements, Irish history and politics

Pedro G. Castillo, Associate Professor of History
Chicano/a history and culture; American social and urban history; race, class, and gender

John Brown Childs, Professor of Sociology
Sociology of knowledge, religion and social action, elitist and populist social movements

Angela Y. Davis, Professor of History of Consciousness
Feminism, African American studies, critical theory, popular music culture and social consciousness, philosophy of punishment (women’s jails and prisons)

Barbara L. Epstein, Professor of History of Consciousness
Social movements and theories of social movements, 20th-century U.S. politics and culture, Marxism and related theories of social change

Susan Gillman, Professor of American Literature
Nineteenth-century American literature and culture; theories of culture, race, and gender; world literature and cultural studies

Herman S. Gray, Professor of Sociology
Cultural studies, media studies

Kirsten Silva Gruesz, Associate Professor of Literature
Comparative Americas studies, Chicano/Latino literatures and cultures, 19th-century U.S. literature, poetry and translation, genre theory

Lisbeth Haas, Associate Professor of History
U.S.-Mexico borderlands, Chicano and Native American history; visual culture in the colonial Americas; the U.S. West and California; historical memory, theory, and historical methodology

Judith A. Habicht-Mauche, Associate Professor of Anthropology
North American prehistory and ethnohistory; cross-cultural interaction and trade; ceramic technology; archaeology of gender, power, and identity; Southwest and Southern Plains

Susan Harding, Professor of Anthropology
Culture, politics, narrative, gender, local/global studies, ethnographic writing, fundamentalism, Christianity, state-making, aging, America, and Spain

Nathaniel E. Mackey, Professor of Literature
Twentieth-century American literature, Afro-American literature, creative writing

Olga Nájera-Ramírez, Professor of Anthropology
Folklore theory, ritual, festival, dance, greater Mexican culture, history and folklore, transnationalism, identity; expressive culture, ethnomusicology, bilingual communication, gender, history, and culture of Latin America, the U.S., and Mexico

Triloki Nath Pandey, Professor of Anthropology
Native peoples of North America, cultures of India, political anthropology, anthropological theories and comparisons

Mary Beth Pudup, Associate Professor of Community Studies
Regional studies, economic justice, public policy, historical geography of the U.S.

Paul N. Skenazy, Professor of American Literature
Contemporary U.S. fiction, popular culture (especially detective fiction), practical criticism and reviews, oral history, the teaching of literature, American writers abroad, journalism

Nancy Stoller, Professor of Community StudiesRace and gender aspects of health, the AIDS epidemic, community organizing, sexualities, and medicine in prisons

Dana Y. Takagi, Professor of Sociology
Methodology, stratification, race relations, social theory, Asian Americans and higher education, identity politics

Marilyn J. Westerkamp, Professor of History
British colonial and revolutionary America, early modern cultural and religious history, U.S. religious history, women’s history, gender

Daniel J. Wirls, Professor of Politics
American politics, including national political institutions (Congress) and the President; public policy (military and foreign policy) and political history

Deborah A. Woo, Professor of Community Studies
Asian Americans and social change, glass ceilings and workplace discrimination, Asian American health, and mental health

Alice Yang Murray, Associate Professor of History
Historical memory, Asian American history, gender history, race and ethnicity, 20th-century U.S., oral history

Patricia Zavella, Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies
The relationship between women’s work and domestic labor, poverty, family, sexuality and social networks, feminist studies, ethnographic research methods, and transnational migration of Mexicana/o workers and U.S. capital