Individual Scholar Page

Personal Info

Photo

About Me

I am an Associate Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), the Chastain-Johnston Middle Eastern Studies Distinguished Professor in Peace Studies, and the Director of FAU’s Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Initiative (PJHR). I specialize in the 20th century history of U.S. foreign relations and women’s history. My research focuses on U.S. relations with the Islamic world, U.S. relations with Iran, women’s human rights, transnational history, and international history. My first book, U.S. Foreign Policy and Muslim Women’s Human Rights (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) explored the integration of American concerns for women’s human rights into U.S. policy towards the Islamic world since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. My other publications include book chapters and journal articles on President Harry Truman and the Middle East, the international movement to end female genital mutilation (FGM), U.S. encounters with Saudi gender relations during the first Gulf War, U.S. relations with Iran, and state of the field essays.

I am currently working on two books. The first is a monograph on U.S. relations with Iran during the first half of the twentieth century, tentatively entitled The Ties That Bind: U.S.-Iran Relations, 1905-1953. The second book, American Feminism and the World since 1945: An International History, is geared toward a general audience and is under contract with Bloomsbury Press. It examines the various ways in which U.S. feminists engaged with, influenced, and were influenced by international and transnational rights movements and global affairs since 1945.

At Florida Atlantic University, I teach undergraduate courses on 20th century U.S. history, U.S. women’s history, U.S. diplomatic history, U.S.-Islamic relations, the history of human rights, historical methods, and the senior seminar. I teach graduate readings courses and research seminars on U.S. women’s movements, U.S. foreign relations history, the history of U.S. empire, and the teaching practicum, and I advise M.A. theses.

Prior to becoming the PJHR director in July 2020, I had been affiliated with PJHR since its inception in 2014, when I served as an inaugural Faculty Fellow from 2014-2016. I am also affiliated with FAU’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) program. I am the recipient of many grants and honors, including a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipend, a Rockefeller Archive Foundation Research Stipend, the Samuel Flagg Bemis Research Grant from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), the SHAFR Summer Institute, and the Marvin Wachman Fellowship in Force and Diplomacy from the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy (CENFAD) at Temple University.  I am an active member of SHAFR, as well as several other scholarly organizations. I have served on multiple SHAFR governing committees, and I currently serve on the SHAFR Executive Council. I have also spoken in many academic and public settings, and I have written op eds in venues like the Washington Post and have been interviewed by NPR and other media outlets.

I am the winner of the 2019 Stuart L. Bernath Lecture Prize awarded by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. One of the highest honors in the field of U.S. foreign relations history, the Bernath Lecture Prize recognizes and encourages excellence in research and teaching by a younger historian (under age 41 or within 10 years of earning the Ph.D.). Prior winners have gone on to become leading scholars in the field. As part of the award, I delivered my Bernath Lecture, “Approaching the Islamic World,” at the SHAFR luncheon held at the American Historical Association annual conference in New York City in January 2020, and my lecture was published in the June 2020 issue of Diplomatic History.

Prior to joining the faculty at FAU in 2014, I was a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at La Salle University in Philadelphia (2010-2011) and an Assistant Professor of History and International Studies at the University of Alaska Anchorage (2011-2014). I was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, and I earned my Ph.D. in History from Temple University, M.A. in History from the University of Connecticut, and A.B. in History from Vassar College.

Recent Publications

Monographs

 

2018     U.S. Foreign Policy and Muslim Women’s Human Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.    Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights Series. Paperback edition published in March 2020.

 

Journal Articles

 

2020     Bernath Lecture: “Approaching the Islamic World,” Diplomatic History 44, no. 3 (June 2020): 387-408. doi:10.1093/dh/dhaa007.

2014     “‘I’m Glad I’m Not a Saudi Woman’: The First Gulf War and U.S. Encounters with Saudi Gender     Relations,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 27, no. 3 (July): 553-573.

 

• Article reprinted as Chapter 5: “‘I’m Glad I’m Not a Saudi Woman’: The First Gulf War and U.S. Encounters with Saudi Gender Relations,” in Western Foreign Policy and the Middle East, Christian Kaunert, Sarah Leonard, Lars Berger, and Gaynor Johnson, 59-79. London: Routledge, 2015.

 

2007     “‘Maybe I Can Marry Them Both’: Conflicted American Views on the Algerian War,” Hindsight 1       (Spring): 1-26.

 

Book Chapters

 

In press   “The Shuster Mission of 1911 and American Perceptions of Iran’s First Revolution” in American-Iranian Dialogues: An International History from Constitution to White Revolution, ed. Matthew Shannon. London: Bloomsbury Academic Press, forthcoming July 2021. New Approaches to International History Series.

 

2018     “Foreign Relations and U.S. in the World – A Historiographical Survey.” In Routledge History of the 20^th             Century United States, eds. Jerald Podair and Darren Dochuk, 161-171. New York: Routledge.   Routledge Handbook Series.

 

2012     “Truman and the Middle East.” In A Companion to Harry S. Truman, ed. Dan Margolies, 362-388.        Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.

 

2012     “The Right to Bodily Integrity: Women’s Rights as Human Rights and the International Movement    to End Female Genital Mutilation, 1970s-1990s.” In The Human Rights Revolution: An International     History, eds. Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde, and William I. Hitchcock, 285-310. New York: Oxford           University Press.

 

Refereed Essays

 

2019     “U.S.-Iran Relations.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, ed. Jon Butler. New                           York: Oxford University Press, January 2019. (14,000 words)   doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.501.

 

Book and Article Reviews

 

In press   Book review of Lucy Delap, Feminisms: A Global History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020) for Diplomatic History.

 

2021     Book review of Lauren Turek, To Bring the Good News to All Nations: Evangelical Influence on Human        Rights and U.S. Foreign Relations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020) for Passport: The Society for   Historians of American Foreign Relations Review 52, no. 1 (January 2021).

 

2019     Book review of Sarah Snyder, From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S.          Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018) for the American Historical Review 124, no.      4 (October): 1475-1476. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhz951.

 

2018     Roundtable book review of Melvyn Leffler, Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism: U.S. Foreign Policy and      National Security, 1920-2015 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017) for Passport: The Society       for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review 49, no. 1 (April): 11-14.

2017     Article review of Jason Zeledon, “‘As Proud as Lucifer’: A Tunisian Diplomat in Thomas Jefferson’s America,” Diplomatic History 41, no. 1 (January 2017): 155-183 for H-Diplo, July 14, https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/186277/h-diplo-article-review-709-“‘-proud-lucifer’-tunisian-diplomat

 

2016     Book review of Daniel Sargent, A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in   the 1970s (New York: Oxford, 2015) for Human Rights Quarterly 38, no. 2 (May): 537-539.

 

2012     Book review of Amy Motlagh, Burying the Beloved: Marriage, Realism, and Reform in Modern Iran (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012) in “Book Notes,” Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) website, June, http://www.asmeascholars.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1502&catid=9&Itemid=64

 

2007     Book review of Peter L. Hahn, Crisis and Crossfire: The United States and the Middle East since 1945          (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, Inc., 2005) in Strategic Visions: Newsletter for the Center of the Study of             Force and Diplomacy @ Temple University 8, no. 1 (Spring): 7.

 

2005     Book review of Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through 20^th-Century Europe       (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005) in Strategic Visions: Newsletter            for the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy @ Temple University 6, no. 2 (Fall): 9.

 

Manuscripts in Preparation

 

The Ties That Bind: U.S.-Iran Relations, 1905-1953 (monograph in research stage)

 

American Feminism and the World since 1945: An International History (book under contract for the New Approaches to International History Series, Bloomsbury Academic Press; manuscript due August 2024)

 

“‘The Diplomacy of Death: Four Murders and U.S.-Iran Relations, 1900-1925” (journal article in writing stage)

 

Op Eds

 

2020     “Women’s Human Rights and U.S. Relations with the Islamic World: Advice for the Biden Administration,” Forum on Rethinking U.S. Engagement with Global Muslim Communities, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Georgetown University, December 11, https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/responses/women-s-human-rights-and-u-s-relations-with-the-islamic-world-advice-for-the-biden-administration

 

2020     “War With Iran Is Not Inevitable – But the U.S. Must Change Course,” The Washington Post, “Made by History” column, January 8, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/01/08/war-with-iran-is-not-inevitable-but-us-must-change-course/

 

2012     “Persepolis and the Middle East Today,” 2012 Anchorage Reads Program and Alaska World Affairs     Council, February 16, Town Square 49, KSKA radio/NPR,       http://www.alaskapublic.org/2012/02/16/”persepolis”-and-the-middle-east-today/

 

Other Writing

 

2021     “W. Morgan Shuster: Friend and Defender of Iranian Democracy,” The Baskerville Newsletter: A Publication of the Baskerville Institute 1, no. 3 (January/February 2021): https://baskervilleinstitute.org/january-february-2021/

 

2020     Guest tweeter for @AfghanHistorians account, Twitter, week of January 13-18.

 

2019     Guest tweeter for @HistoriansOfIran account, Twitter, week of November 11-16.

 

2014     “The Rosenberg Espionage Trial and Engaged Learning Activities,” online poster, Making Learning Visible, CAFÉ, University of Alaska Anchorage, April, http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/cafe/portfolios/makinglearningvisible/reenacting-the-rosenbergs-engaged-learning-and-thinking-historically.cfm

 

2014     “The Status of Women in Diplomatic and International History, 2008-2012: Five-Year Follow-Up Report, Prepared by the Committee on Women in SHAFR” by Kelly J. Shannon (co-chair), Laura Belmonte (co-chair), Walter Hixson, Katie Sibley, Kathy Rasmussen, and Shannon Fitzpatrick, Passport: The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review 44, no. 3 (January): 61-65.

 

2012     “The Last Word: SHAFR Is From Mars…,” Passport: The Society for Historians of American Foreign          Relations Review 43, no. 1 (September): 70-71.

 

2009     “India and the World: Michele Louro Organizes International Workshop at Temple,” Strategic Visions:            Newsletter for the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy @ Temple University 10, no. 2 (Fall): 1-2.

 

2009     “The Status of Women in Diplomatic and International History: A Report Prepared by the SHAFR   Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Women,” by Frank Costigliola, co-chair; Petra Goedde, co-chair         Barbara Keys, Anna K. Nelson, Andrew Rotter, and Kelly J. Shannon, Passport: The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review 39, no. 3 (January): 25-34.

 

2008     “Inside the SHAFR Ad Hoc Committee on Women,” Strategic Visions: Newsletter for the Center for the     Study of Force and Diplomacy @ Temple University 9, no. 2 (Fall): 2-4.

 

2008     “On Suicide Bombing: Talal Asad’s Visit to Temple,” Strategic Visions: Newsletter for the Center for the Study   of Force and Diplomacy @ Temple University 9, no. 1 (Spring): 4-5.

Media Coverage

Social Media

@TheGingerProf

Country Focus

United States, Iran

Expertise by Geography

Middle East, United States

Expertise by Chronology

Modern, 20th century, 21st century

Expertise by Topic

American Presidents, Colonialism, Diplomacy, Gender, Government, Human Rights, Politics, Rebellion & Revolution, Religion, Women