People

Jeremy King studied Soviet history in college, but then fell prisoner to the tragedies and charms of Central Europe. Trained at Columbia University as a historian of Austria-Hungary and its successor states, he lived for several years in Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Berlin, and a few other cities in the region. King teaches courses on Central Europe since about 1800. Themes and nodal points include nationalism, the state (liberal, democratic, fascist, and communist), "race," law, the Holocaust, public policy, and post-communism.

Richard Chu's research focuses on the history of the Chinese and Chinese mestizos in the Philippines and the different Chinese diasporic communities in the world, centering on issues of ethnicity, gender, and nationalism.

Deeply engaged in bringing history to wider audiences beyond the academy, Daniel Czitrom served as the historical advisor for Copper, an original dramatic series set in Civil War-era New York City (BBC America, 2011-13). He has also appeared as on-camera commentator for several documentaries, including The Rise and Fall of Penn Station (PBS, 2014) and New York: A Documentary Film (PBS,1999). Czitrom is the author most recently New York Exposed: The Gilded Age Police Scandal that launched the Progressive Era (2016), as well as Media and the American Mind (1982), and Rediscovering Jacob Riis (2008).

Desmond Fitz-Gibbon is a cultural historian of modern imperial Britain and western Europe, with thematic interests in urban history, science and technology studies and the history of economic life. His research examines the practice and meaning of markets and market culture through the history of real estate exchange in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. 

Xiaofei Gao is a historian of modern China with research interests in social and labor history, gender and sexuality, and environmental history. She is currently working on a book manuscript that examines the social and environmental history of China’s northeastern coastal communities in the twentieth century.

Lowell Gudmundson focuses on coffee, Central America, and Afro-Latin America.  His students have earned graduate and professional degrees in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe.  They have turned their own research interests, as diverse as history, immigration, ethnomusicology, health care, and food studies, into career paths in politics, publishing, medicine, public health, urban planning or ecotourism.  Gudmundson maintains close ties and joint research projects with Costa Rica’s public universities where he began his career.

Holly Hanson is a social historian of Africa whose research and publications focus on Uganda. Her interests include the history of democracy and political accountability in East Africa over the last five hundred years, land tenure, the role of farming in building prosperous communities, and economic history. Many of her classes incorporate community-based learning opportunities with recently resettled African immigrant in the area and "Education and Capacity in African History includes a collaboration with the Springfield Renaissance School.

Stephanie M. Huezo is a Latin American and Latinx historian. Her research focuses on survival and resistance tactics of community-based organizations in both El Salvador and the U.S. She is also interested in the study of memory and belonging that go beyond national borders. In her research and in the classroom, Huezo uses both oral histories and written documents to highlight different perspectives.

Abhilash Medhi is a historian of modern South Asia, with interest in the comparative histories of 19th and 20th century colonialism. His work focuses on colonial governance and capitalist expansion in the two extremities of the Indian subcontinent, the Indo-Afghan borderlands and northeast India. Medhi has undertaken policy research in Afghanistan in a previous avatar and still maintains links with development organizations in the country. In the classroom, as in his research, he brings a political-economic perspective to the reading of social and cultural histories.

Lynda Morgan's research interests center around 19th century African-American history, including slavery, the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction. As a social historian, she places the experiences of groups of people at center stage, linked to political and economic history. Recently Morgan became interested in the reparations movement and its history, which has taken her into the 20th and 21st centuries. She is also interested in the free African-American population in the antebellum North, the history of segregation, the role of violence against African-Americans, and the abolition movement.

A historian who continually pushes the boundaries of her discipline, Mary Renda focuses her teaching and research on US empire, women and gender, racism, activism, and the transnational contexts in which histories of North America and the Caribbean have taken shape. In addition to her course offerings on U.S. women's history, African-American women, and histories of empire, Renda teaches interdisciplinary gender studies courses. It's not a vacation from her area of specialty, however. "When I teach gender studies," says Renda, "it brings into sharper relief the importance of history."

Lan Wu is a historian of early modern China with a focus on borderlands. She received her PhD in the History-East Asia Program from Columbia University in February 2016. Lan’s research focuses on the role of religion in imperial formation in China. Her current book project examines how marginal communities in inner Asia grew stronger, as China expanded its territory in the eighteenth century. 

In addition to teaching Greek and Latin language and literature at all levels, Paula Debnar offers a variety of courses on the ancient Mediterranean taught in English, including "Gods and Mortals: Myth in Ancient Art and Literature," "Athenian Democracy," and writing intensive first-year seminars on the ancient Greek world, such as "Homer's Iliad: A Big Fat Ancient Greek War?" and "Socratic Questions."

Stan Rachootin teaches what evolved (Introductory Biology, Terrestrial Arthropods, Invertebrate Zoology), how evolution might work (Evolution, Macroevolution), and how evolution evolved (Darwin). He has advised theses on how flatfish evolved from round fish, why a tiny fly preserved in amber made eye lenses on its wings, and what the differences in shapes of closely related snails teach us about metaphor in statistics. Each project takes a new problem, though most find that development can help disentangle an evolutionary mystery.

A writer, teacher, photographer, and pilot, Lauret Savoy is also a woman of multiracial heritage. Her courses and writings explore the narratives we tell of the American land’s origins — and the narratives we tell of ourselves in this land, including the place of race. Winner of Mount Holyoke College’s Distinguished Teaching Award and an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, Lauret has also held fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution and Yale University. She is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. Senior classes have chosen her to be a Baccalaureate speaker and Last Lecturer.

Geoffrey Sumi teaches Greek and Latin at all levels, while his interest in the political and social history of the ancient world is reflected in the courses he teaches in translation: The Roman Empire; Sport, Society, and Politics in the Roman World; and From Hoplites to Legions: Warfare in the Greek and Roman World.

Holly Sharac is a Francis Perkins graduate ('94), has been working at the College since 1988, and is the Academic Department Coordinator for both the History Department and the Africana Studies Program.