Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Keywords: American History, United States History, California History, Frontier History, 19th Century United States, 20th Century United States, Homesteading, Desert Development, Women's History, Cultural Memory, Frontier Nostalgia

About Me: Julie Haltom is lecturer at California State University, Long Beach. Courses taught include Early U.S. History; Recent U.S. History; California History; and Facts, Evidence, and Explanation. She is also the faculty coordinator for CSULB’s History Writing Tutors.

She received her MA in History from California State University, Long Beach in August 2023. Her thesis, “Five Acres of Freedom: Jackrabbit Homesteading in the Mojave Desert, 1938-1976,” examines small-tract homesteading in postwar Southern California in the contexts of frontier nostalgia, cultural conceptions of land ownership, anti-urbanism, and suburban imaginary. It was awarded Best Master’s Thesis by the CSULB College of Liberal Arts and was nominated for the WAGS/ProQuest award for Distinguished Master’s Thesis in Humanities, Social Sciences, Education, and Business Disciplines.

In the 2020-2021 academic year, she served as the Graduate Editorial Assistant for The History Teacher, a peer-reviewed academic journal focused on history education.

In 2022, she served as the Cottonwood Archival Research Intern at Rancho Los Alamitos Historic Ranch and Gardens, a historic site in Long Beach, California.

Recent Publications: “‘Jackrabbiting’ away from Urban Spaces. The Metropole. August 29, 2023. https://themetropole.blog/2023/08/29/jackrabbiting-away-from-urban-spaces/

Review of California: An American History by John Mack Faragher, The History Teacher 57, no. 2 (February 2024): 272-273

Review of Backcountry Ghosts: California Homesteaders and the Making of a Dubious Dream by Josh Sides, The History Teacher 55, no. 3 (May 2022): 572-573.