Faculty

"My research focuses on marriage in Minnesota before 1850, particularly as a means of understanding gender, sexuality, race and nation-building in the region. Marriages of all kinds, and the households that marriages created, were inextricably bound up with questions of nation and identity for the Dakota, the Ojibwe, mixed-heritage individuals, and Americans who interacted in the Upper Midwest. Through the stories of married - and divorcing - men and women in the region, we can trace the uneven fortunes of American expansion in the early nineteenth century, and the nation-shaping power of marital acts."

"As a specialist in modern European history, I'm fascinated with the connection between politics and culture, especially under authoritarian regimes. My work focuses on the transnational impact of the transformation of military culture in the interwar era and compares these developments in Germany and Turkey in the ‘30s. In my teaching, I try to alert the students to the importance of comparative analysis in history without losing touch with specific regional historical experiences."

"Currently I am researching cross-cultural interactions between China and the West during the 1930s. I am focused primarily on how these presentations of culture were made to the Western other and how the specifics of those presentations affect authenticity and understanding between China and its interlocutors. The most interesting thing about this topic is how it provides such a penetrating tool for defining the past and how it sheds light even on contemporary cross-cultural interactions."

"Both Classics and Women's Studies have shaped my research interests. I am currently looking at first century Roman elegiac poetry, asking questions such as: What can we learn from these texts about gender and power relations in ancient Rome? What can a text written by a smitten lover tell us about a culture that earlier generations studied to learn about law and military history? Can a poem that celebrates the simple pleasures of the Italian countryside teach us anything about Rome-the most powerful city the world had known?"

"Alongside other scholarly pursuits, I am working on a book project that focuses on the god Dionysos in Athens. The theoretical approach is psychoanalytic and anthropological, and the evidence is drawn from both written and visual sources; these include Dionysos in Homer, Attic comedy and tragedy, and the Platonic Dialogues, as well as the evidence of the Attic painted pottery."

"My most immediate projects are in the areas of Black Studies theory, African American literary criticism, Black psychology traditions, and the status of Blacks in Latin America."