History

History 490 Topics/Advisors

Each student will have a primary adviser who specializes in the student's research area. Below are faculty and their areas of specialty.

Professor Axelrod: Modern U.S. and history of the West, 1800-present

  • Los Angeles and/orCalifornia, U.S. West and frontier
  • U.S. urbanism/suburbanism
  • Popular culture/mass culture amusements
  • History of transportation, computer/internet technology
  • Film/television

Professor Dumenil: U.S. History —  Civil War to the present, with special interest in 1920-1970

  • War and home-front issues (propaganda; race; gender; mobilization, war and the “state”)
  • Women’s history, especially the 20th century
  • Social reform (Progressivism, New Deal, Great Society, civil rights movement, feminism)
  • Popular culture (advertising, film, television)
  • Immigration (immigrant experience, immigration law)
  • Right-wing politics

Professor Fett: Early American History

Slavery and abolition

  • African American culture and community
  • Health and healing, early history of U.S. medicine
  • Antebellum South
  • Antebellum women’s history, and topics in the early 18th and 19th c. Atlantic World (with emphasis on North America and Caribbean)
  • American Revolution
  • Civil War

Professor Gasper: Modern Middle Eastern History

  • Social, cultural and intellectual history of the Arab world
  • State and nation building in the Middle East
  • Late Ottoman history
  • Colonialism and post-colonialism
  • Nationalisms and Islamist ideology
  • Islamic modernism

Professor Gelbart: Early Modern European History

France and early modern Europe

  • European women’s history
  • The interaction of ideas and socio-political movements
  • History of science
  • History of medicine, panics and plagues
  • History as depicted in film

Professor Horowitz:  Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Early Modern European history

  • European women’s history and feminism
  • History of ideas
  • History of museums and collecting
  • Ancient history

Professor Li: Asian History

  • Traditional, late imperial (Ming and Qing) and modern political/socio-economic/cultural history of China
  • United States and East Asian relations: cultural, popular culture and media, economic and diplomatic
  • Selected topics on contemporary China

Professor Nam: Asian History

  • Korea during the Japanese colonial period, 1910-1945
  • Korea-Japan relations
  • Japan-U.S. relations
  • Asian student movements
  • Postwar Japanese cinema

Professor Puerto: Modern Latin America

  • Intellectual history of modern Latin America
  • Environmental history of modern Latin America
  • 20th-century Mexico
  • Latin American-U.S. relations
  • Race and ethnicity
  • Cold War in Latin America
  • Cultural and political history of southern Mexico

Professor Sousa: Colonial and Modern Latin America

  • Colonial Latin America
  • Indigenous peoples in colonial and modern Mexico and the Andes
  • Latin American women’s history
  • African and Indian slavery in colonial Latin America
  • History of race in Latin America

Professor Stone: Modern Europe

  • Modern European history from the French Revolution to the present
  • Issues related to war, fascism, Nazism, and genocide
  • European cultural, intellectual, and social history
  • Italian history
  • History of film and the arts
  • The history of European social and political movements of both the left and the right
  • Phone: (323) 259-2751
  • Fax: (323) 341-4687
  • Location: Swan Hall
  • Email: history@oxy.edu