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About Me

Aliza S. Wong, Ph.D. is the Associate Dean of the Honors College, an Associate Professor of History and the Director of European Studies. Dr. Wong received her undergraduate degree with a triple major in History, English, and Asian Languages and Civilizations from Amherst College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

A dedicated teacher, Dr. Wong has been honored with several teaching awards including the Phi Alpha Theta Distinguished Faculty Award, the Hemphill-Wells New Faculty Teaching Award, the Mortar Board Society’s Outstanding Faculty Award, the Alumni Association New Faculty Award, the President’s Excellence in Teaching Award, the Eta Omicron Nu Distinguished Faculty Award, the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award, the President’s Excellence in Diversity Award, the Texas Tech Inclusive Excellence Award. Most recently, Dr. Wong was selected as one of YWCA’s Women of Excellence for her work in Social Justice.

Dr. Wong is a specialist in modern Italian history with a concentration on southern question discourse, race, nationalism, and identity. Her book, Race and Nation in Liberal Italy, 1861-1911: Meriodionalism, Empire, and Diaspora (Palgrave, 2006). She also edited The Texas Liberators: Veteran Narratives from World War II, an extension of the Texas Liberator Project generously supported by the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission. The project features an app, an educational website, interactive maps and digital archives, and a traveling museum exhibit. More information on the Texas Liberator Project can be found at www.texasliberators.org. Aliza Wong is a two-time Fulbright Scholar.

Recent Publications

Selected Publications:

 

Public and Engaged Scholarship –

– Narratives of Modern Genocide – $80,000 grant from the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission

• executive producer on 90 minute nonfiction film (directed by     Paul Allen Hunton and produced by KTTZ on the stories of survivors of modern genocide

• educational website with resources in Holocaust and genocide education).

– The Texas Liberator Project – $180,000 grant from the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission (October, 2017)

www.texasliberators.org

www.liberatorsproject.org

• research and development of pedagogical learning tool to introduce the narratives of veterans who liberated concentration camps during the Second World War to new generation of high school students (app has been distributed to all Texas high schools)

• web resource page for students and educators that features pedagogical and research materials

– Texas Liberators Honor Roll (a searchable, researchable digital archive that features 320+ names of U.S. soldiers who were present at the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps)

– educator’s guide

– interactive maps with digital archive from the Liberators Honor Roll

– teaser trailer, walkthrough, oral history videos

– educational materials (discussion questions, projects, exams, etc.)

– filmographies and bibliographies

– links to international museums, archives, libraries, and collections for further research

• edited volume of the narratives of the Texas Liberators subsidized by a $40,000 grant from the

Friends of the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission and distributed for free to all Texas public and private middle school and high school libraries (Texas Tech University Press, 2017)

• Texas Tech Recognition Ceremony for Texas Liberators (October, 2017)

• State of Texas and Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission Medallion Ceremony for Texas Liberators in the Senate Room at the Austin State Capitol (November, 2017)

• fully curated exhibit at the Museum at Texas Tech University (August-December, 2017)

• traveling exhibit to tour the state of Texas (2018-2020)

– will open at the Holocaust Musuem Houston in September, 2018

– will open in Corpus Christi on the USS Lexington, November, 2018

– will open at the Midland Museum, January, 2019

– in negotations to open at the Bullock Texas State History Museum, 2020

 

 

Books –

– Spaghetti Westerns: A Viewer’s Guide (Rowman and Littlefield, December, 2018)

– The Texas Liberators: Veteran Narratives from World War II (Texas Tech University Press, 2017)

– Race and Nation in Liberal Italy, 1861-1911: Meridionalism, Empire, and Diaspora (Palgrave, 2006)

– The Making of the (Italian) West: The Imagining of the American Frontier in Italy (proposal under consideration)

 

Edited Volume –

– Guest editor, special edition for Cheiron: Materiali e strumenti di aggiornamento storiografico published by FrancoAngeli in Milan, Italy on the concept of the global American West (due Spring, 2020)

 

Chapters in Books –

– “Authenticity, Health, and Hygiene: Food Discourses, Diasporas, and the Limits of Cuisine in

Contemporary Italy,” Communicating Italian Food, ed. Zach Nowak (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017).

– “Malaysian Pirates, American Cowboys, and the Marginalized Outlaw: Constructing Other-ed Adventurers in Italian Film,” in Spaghetti Westerns at the Crossroads: Studies in Relocation, Transition and Appropriation, ed. Austin Fisher (University of Edinburgh, 2016)

– “Italian D.O.C. – American Cowboys, Malaysian Pirates, and the Italian Construction of Other-ed Adventurers in Film,” in Italian Westerns: Re-Locating the Frontier, ed. Cynthia Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper (Scarecrow Press, 2013).

– “Protecting the Palate: Racial Discourse and Xenophobia in Italian Food Culture,” in Italy, the Mediterranean and Beyond: Echioltremare (Rome: Narcissus, 2012).

Media Coverage

http://radio.kttz.org/post/faith-matters-dr-aliza-wong, http://radio.kttz.org/post/inside-texas-tech-texas-liberator#stream/0, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4pi90pbkso

Social Media

@damicowong

Country Focus

Italy and Diaspora

Expertise by Geography

Western Europe

Expertise by Chronology

19th century, 20th century, 21st century

Expertise by Topic

Colonialism, Food History, Genocide, Migration & Immigration, Race, Women