Faculty News Summer 2025
Nancy C. Unger has been awarded Emerita status. That title takes effect 1 September, which is the official beginning of her retirement after 31 years at Santa Clara University.
A wonderful time was had by all at Prof. Unger’s retirement party. Fellow faculty, students, alumni, and Prof. Unger’s own family joined in for speeches, strawberries and cheese, and a champagne toast. Gorgeous floral arrangements were designed by Prof. Andrews.
Not that retirement or this party has at all slowed Prof. Unger down! Au contraire, she recently went live on July 2nd on Sirius XM's Smerconish show to comment on the Mann Act and Sean Combs. The verdict had just come in moments before, so the host, Danny Cevallos, introduced Prof. Unger as an expert on the Mann Act by saying, "And this is the timeliest interview in the history of radio!" I relay Prof. Unger in her own words here, sharing that her take for the show was "that convicting Combs on the Mann Act is a bit like convicting Al Capone on tax evasion--that wasn't the crime most people associated with him, but it's the low-hanging fruit and the charge that the prosecution could make stick. I assume he'll appeal, citing the racist history of the Mann Act."
Dr. Unger’s article, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Betty Smith’s Bestselling Introduction to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era," appears in the special issue on literature co-edited by Nancy for the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (she also chaired the roundtable "Walter Nugent and the Broadening of American History" that appears in that issue).
Professor Unger also has a new piece up in the pages of Time magazine on the progressive legacy of Wisconsin public servant Fightin' Bob LaFollette.
Paul Mariani, S.J., who was promoted to full professor this past year, is celebrating his new book, China’s Church Divided, coming out this summer.
Recent praise from Richard Madsen includes: “Drawing on his unique access to Jesuit archives, Prof. Mariani sheds new light on the conflict between ecclesiastical and Communist politics in a tumultuous world moving out of the Cold War.”
Assistant Professor Sonia Gomez was awarded the Organization of American Historians’ Mary Nickliss Prize for her book Picture Bride, War Bride: The Role of Marriage in Shaping Japanese America. The Prize is given annually to an academic historian for “the most original” book in United States Women’s or Gender History, or its colonial antecedent.
The OAH defines “the most original” book as one that is a path-breaking work or that challenges or changes widely accepted scholarly interpretations in the field of U.S. Women’s and Gender History.
On March 3rd, the Silicon Valley Studies Initiative directed by History faculty member Meg Eppel Gudgeirsson hosted the talk "Before Silicon Valley: Mexican Agricultural and Cannery Workers of Santa Clara County, 1920-1960" by Margo McBane, Ph.D., emeritus faculty from San José State University. Dr. McBane discussed the history of these workers in our region as well as the act of preserving this history for the public.
The Silicon Valley Studies Initiative, directed by Meg Eppel Gudgeirsson, hosted its final event for the academic year on May 2. Public historian Natalie Marine-Street from Stanford University led students, faculty, and staff in a workshop on conducting oral interviews to understand our region's past.
Matthew Specter’s 2022 book from Stanford Press, The Atlantic Realists, was the subject of a review forum in the prestigious H-Diplo which includes Matthew’s response. The book will appear in Mandarin translation this summer. Prof. Specter gave an interview to French daily La Croix on the future of the transatlantic relationship in March. In May, he lectured on Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz to the ninety freshman in Stanford University's Structural Liberal Education (SLE) program.
Prof. Specter has also just completed his 10th year as Associate Editor of History & Theory based at Wesleyan University.
Dr. Amy Randall recently published an essay, “Writing Stalinist History in Cold War Breezes,” co-authored with Kate Brown, in Other Voices in Soviet History: Collected for a Devil's Advocate, ed. Dan Healey, Tracy MacDonald, & Heather DeHaan (University of Toronto Press, 2025), pp. 18-37.
In June, Professor Randall taught a seminar, "Gender and Genocide," for the University of Connecticut's "2025 Scheidt Family Seminar on Genocide Studies & Prevention" for 20 participants from 7 different countries. All are college/university educators, museum/NGO educators, or people working in policymaking or the security sector.
Marwan Daoud Hanania will be teaching an interdisciplinary summer course with the Stanford Continuing Studies Program entitled "Demystifying the Middle East." Prof. Hanania is also teaching a summer course with the SCU OLLI entitled "Crossroads of Civilization: Understanding the History, Culture, and Politics of the Levant.” He also gave the keynote address for the SCU Office of Multicultural Learning's Middle Eastern North African (MENA) Recognition Celebration on June 4th, celebrating the graduation of graduate and undergraduate students. On March 9th, Prof. Hanania gave a talk for the Stanford Alumni Club of Rossmoor about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Dr. Hanania also submitted a book proposal to the University of Texas Press for a manuscript entitled Amman, City in the Middle: 1878 to the Present.
Matthew Newsom Kerr published an article in the January 2025 edition of Medical History: “An 'arsenal for the supply of ammunition for the defence of vaccination': the Jenner Society and anti-anti-vaccinationism in England, 1896-1906.”
Professor Newsom Kerr has also shared his research at recent talks and conferences, including the Pacific Coast Conference of British Studies at Stanford on March 28: “‘Nature’s School’: Anti-Vaccinationism and the Gloucester Smallpox Epidemic of 1896” and the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health at Humboldt University Berlin, August 28: “The Fault in Our Scars: Inscribing Smallpox Vaccination in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” He presented his research on the Gloucester epidemic in a Brown Bag Speaker Series in the Humanities on May 14 in the University Library.
Along with artist Maya Gurantz and Chair of the Public Health Department, Sonja Mackenzie, Professor Newsom Kerr participated in a panel presentation on April 29 (“Re-Imagining Public Health Futures and Histories”) at the De Saisset Museum in conjunction with the exhibit The Plague Archives.
Assistant Professor of History Jeannette Estruth has been named a Santa Clara University Center for Arts and Humanities Faculty Fellow for 2025-2026. Estruth will use her time as a fellow to complete research for a journal-article-in-progress entitled "The Galactic Commons: Reimagining Interplanetary Commons from the Cold War to the Present,” which has been invited for publication in a special journal issue in 2026. Estruth also recently gave an invited talk in the Stanford University History Department in May. She spoke to students at Santa Clara History Day in April and to Prof. Andrews’ History 100 Class, and had a paper entitled “Science and the City” accepted at the upcoming Urban History Association Meeting in October in Los Angeles. In June, Estruth was re-appointed as Faculty Associate at the Harvard Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society, where she has maintained affiliation since 2018.
Several Members of the History Department joined our graduates as they walked across the Commencement Stage on June 14th, 2025. We are so proud of the Class of 2025! Congratulations, Grads, and please stay in touch
Santa Clara University hosted the American Historical Association’s Pacific Coast Branch Meeting, from July 30 to August 1. The theme was High Stakes History: Studying the Past in a Perilous Present, and featured work from distinguished scholars from all over the country and the world. They were joined by a number of Santa Clara undergraduate historians who shared their own research!