Welcome to my homepage. Please explore other pages to find out more about my teaching and research interests and how I think the present engages the past. Please note that for the 2015-2016 academic year, I am Interim Dean of Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs. My contact information is below.

I have taught at Scripps College since 1989. Before that I taught at Reed College for two years and went to graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, my first and, as it turned out, lasting relationship with the U.S. West. I grew up in New York City and earned my B.A. at Wesleyan University.

I am Professor of History. Most of my work, like my education, has stressed the interdisciplinary nature of intellectual inquiry and has focused on social change and the relationship of ideas to society and politics. My research focuses on the history of anthropology, particularly on Franz Boas. I am also beginning a new project on the uses of history in wartime. I teach U.S. cultural and intellectual history, including courses on women’s history, political and cultural criticism, and on war and society. I have received Mary Wig Johnson Faculty Achievement awards in teaching, research and service, and I have served as chair of the History Department, the American Studies Program, and the Faculty Executive Committee and as Director of the Humanities Institute. In 2014 I was a Bernard and Audre Rapoport Fellow at Jacob Rader Marcus Center, American Jewish Archives, in Cincinnati. In 2010 I spent a semester as Senior Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Bologna.

My CV is available here.

Check out the History Department Facebook Group and the Scripps History Alumnae Profiles to find out what History Majors are doing and to stay in touch.

Contact information

Email: [email protected]

Office: Dean of Faculty, Balch 122

Office Hours: by appointment (909-607-2822)

Address: Scripps College, Box 4037, 1030 Columbia Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711