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Faculty
Director, Center for the Americas and Professor of History Claire Potter focuses her research on the social and cultural dynamics of state formation in the 20th century. She is the author of a major study of the FBI's war on midwestern bandits in the 1930s and currently working on a book which explores the impact of historical writing about race and citizenship on nationalist discourse in the United States. A third project in its early stages focuses on policing the US-Mexico border during the Cold War. She teaches the survey courses on U.S. Foreign Relations (which highlights interhemispheric relations), Politics and Culture of the Southern States, and post Stonewall queer political thought; as well as seminars on the New Deal, crime, and the Cold War.
Professor of History Patricia Hill specializes in 19th-century U.S. cultural, women's, and religious history. Her study, The World Their Household, examines the ways in which the Protestant mission movement worked to produce cultural transformations abroad while reflexively transforming American culture. She has participated in recent regional and national discussions focusing on internationalizing the American Studies curriculum.
Associate Professor of American Studies and Anthropology J. Kehaulani Kauanui whose dissertation was entitled "Rehabilitating the Native: Hawaiian Blood Quantum and the Politics of Race, Citizenship, and Entitlement" has research interests in 1930s scientific studies on "hybrid Hawaiians" and attendant issues of eugenics and governmentality; Pacific Islander diasporic politics in the United States; historicizing Hawaiian presence in America, and Hawaiian nationalist models of citizenship and decolonization in relation to gender and sexuality. Her work appears in Amerasia Journal, Women's Studies International Forum, Pacific Studies, The Contemporary Pacific, and Social Text. She currently serves as a member of the Coordinating Committee for the Summit on the Status of Pacific Islanders and Southeast Asians in Higher Education.
Olin Professor of English and American Studies Richard Slotkin has established a reputation as one of the preeminent cultural critics of our times. His award-winning trilogy on the myth of the frontier in America, which includes Regeneration Through Violence, The Fatal Environment, and Gunfighter Nation offers an original and highly provocative interpretation of our national experience. He has also published three historical novels: The Crater: A Novel of the Civil War; The Return of Henry Starr; and Abe: A Novel of the Young Lincoln. In his more than 25 years at Wesleyan, he has helped to establish both the American Studies and the Film Studies Programs. He offers interdisciplinary courses in American literature, history and film. In 1995 he received the Mary C Turpie Award of the American Studies Association for his contributions to teaching and program-building.
Professor of History Ann Wightman specializes in Latin American colonial history. Her award-winning Indigenous Migration and Social Change analyzes the impact of Spanish colonization on traditional Indian communities. She is continuing her research on Andean society in her current study of kinship ties within the Indian community of seventeenth-century Peru. In 1996, she won a university award for excellence in teaching.
MELLON POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS 2007-2008
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow: Kenneth Routon is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research interests include critical studies of culture, power, and history; magic, sorcery, and ritual practice; popular culture and the state. His work appears in the Journal of Latin American Anthropology, Identities: Global Studies of Culture and Power, Anthropology News, and the forthcoming edited volume, The Special Period: Cuban Culture in the 1990s. He is currently preparing a book manuscript entitled, Sorcery, Socialism, and the Politics of Enchantment in Cuba.
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