Regular Faculty
Alexander F. Day
Associate 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.
Sharla Fett
Professor, 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.
Nina Gelbart
Professor, History; Anita Johnson Wand Professor of Women's Studies
A.B., Harvard University; M.A., Ph.D., University of Chicago
Nina Gelbart is Professor of History and Anita Johnson Wand Professor of Women's Studies at Oxy. Before joining the History Department, she first started teaching in the Core Program at Oxy in 1975,…
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.
Maryanne Horowitz
Professor, History
A.B., Pembroke College, Brown University; M.A.T., Harvard University; M.A., Ph.D., University of Wisconsin
Cultural historian Maryanne Horowitz teaches courses on Rise, Fall and Rebirth: Europe since the Enlightenment; Humanities from the Renaissance to the Present; Europe and the Middle East from Antiquity to 1700; Ancient Athens and Renaissance Florence, and Renaissance to Revolution! She welcomes interest in changing views of women, gender, and sexualities, and of human rights.
Lisa Sousa
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.
Marla Stone
Professor, History
B.A., Pomona College; M.A., Ph.D., Princeton University
A specialist in questions of dictatorship and genocide in the modern era, Marla Stone's work emphasizes the relationship among culture, politics, and the state in the 20th century.
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…
Non-Tenure Track Faculty
Thomas J. Balcerski
Ray A. Billington Professor of United States History
B.A., Cornell University; M.A., Stony Brook University; M.A., Ph.D., Cornell University
Thomas Balcerski is the Ray Allen Billington Visiting Professor in U.S. History and a Long-Term Fellow at the Huntington Library for academic year 2022-2023. At Oxy, he will teach courses on U.S. Presidents and First Ladies and the history of the Democratic Party, from Thomas Jefferson to Joe Biden.
Christine Grant
Visiting Assistant Professor, History
B.A., University of Bradford; M.A., West Virginia University; Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University
Affiliated Faculty
Erica Ball
Mary Jane Hewitt Department Chair in Black Studies; Professor of Black Studies
B.A., Wesleyan University; M.A., Ph.D., The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Erica L. Ball is a historian who specializes in nineteenth and twentieth-century African American history.
Xiao-huang Yin
Professor, American Studies
B.A., Nanjing University; M.A., Ph.D., Harvard University
Xiao-huang Yin specializes in Asian American studies, U.S.-Asia relations, and modern China.