Faculty

Regular Faculty

Michael Gasper, Chair

Associate Professor, History

B.A., Temple University; M.A., Ph.D., New York University

Michael Gasper teaches courses on the History of the Modern Middle East and North Africa, the History of the Ottoman Empire and the History of Islam and the Muslim World.

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Alexander F. Day

Professor, History & Asian Studies

B.A. Colby College; M.A., Ph.D. UC Santa Cruz

Alexander Day studies the intellectual, social, and cultural history of peasants, food, and agrarian change in China. He teaches Chinese, East Asian, and world history. Read his Oxy Story profile.

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Sharla Fett

Robert Glass Cleland Professor in American History

B.A., Carleton College; M.A., Stanford University; Ph.D., Rutgers University

Sharla Fett teaches courses on early U.S. and African American history, including the Atlantic World, Slavery and the Antebellum South, U.S. Women’s History, and Collective Memory and Slavery’s Legacies. Read her Oxy Story profile.

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Jane Hong

Associate Professor, History

B.A. Yale University; A.M., Brown University; A.M., Ph.D., Harvard University

Jane Hong is a historian of U.S. immigration and engagement with the world, with a focus on Asia after World War II.

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Lisa Sousa

Norman Bridge Professor, History

B.A., M.A., Ph.D., UCLA

Sousa specializes in the histories of colonial Latin America, indigenous peoples and languages of Mexico, and women, gender and sexuality.

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Marla Stone

Professor, History

B.A., Pomona College; M.A., Ph.D., Princeton University

A specialist in the history of fascism, dictatorship and genocide in the Europe, Marla Stone's work emphasizes the relationship among culture, politics, and the state in the 20th century.

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Jonathan Veitch

Professor of History

B.A., Stanford University; M.A., Harvard University; Ph.D., Harvard University

Prior to Occidental, he taught for four years in the English department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, then joined The New School in New York City. As an associate professor of literature…

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Non-Tenure Track Faculty

Damon Akins

Ray Allen Billington Visiting Professor (2024-2025), History

B.A. Oklahoma City University; M.A. University of California, Los Angeles; Ph.D. University of Oklahoma

Occidental College and the Huntington Library co-founded the Ray Allen Billington Visiting Professorship in United States History. The Billington Visiting Professorship has brought some of the country's leading historians to Occidental.

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