Preliminary draft conference program (to be amended)

Rooms To Be Assigned: WRI B326, WRI C148, WRI C151, WRI C209, WRI C212, WRI C233, WRI C235, WRI C237, WRI C239, WRI C305, WRI C307, WRI C308, WRI C309, WRI C311, BEH 241 (Camarillo Luncheon)

Wednesday: Council, Business, and Committee meetings

Session I, Thursday, 8-9:30 a.m.

Popular Culture Shaping Life

Casey Pearlman, San Diego State University, Bert, Ernie, and Education: How ‘Sesame Street’ reimagined children’s television and American politics
Elizabeth Frohoff, San Diego State University and San Diego Unified School District, Reel Empires: Hollywood Westerns and the Frontier Logic of US Intervention
Mikelle Andersen, University of Utah, What Did the Monkees Have to Say?: Girls and Commercialism in 1960s Counterculture

Reflections on the 4^th of July

Chair: Tyler D. Parry, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
B. Wilkinson, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Mixed-Heritage Families and Communities in the British Colonies
Erica Ball, Occidental College, For Frederick Douglass and Others: Monuments and Black Countermemory
Jeff Schauer, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Apartheid Refugees in Trump’s America: The Transnational Politics of Democratization and its Undoing
Tyler D. Parry, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Contesting Modern Myth-Stories: Researching and Teaching Ethnic Studies in a Post-Humanities World
Justin Gomer, California State University, Long Beach, Race, Hollywood, and the Framing of National Identity

Women Making History

Kasia May, University of Utah, Sister Midwife: Early Latter-day Saint Midwives and the Gendered Politics of Healing
Jennifer Bridges, Tarrant County College, Daughters of 1776: Women’s Equality and the Constitutional Struggle for the ERA
Nicholas Demjan, University of Southern California, Sisters On The Inside: Seeing Refusal and Reimagining Incarcerated Women’s Role in ACT UP Los Angeles

Recentering the Agrarian Margin: Race, Gender, and Organizing in Rural California

Chair/Comment: Oliver Rosales, Bakersfield College
Devin Antonio, California State University, Fresno, They See Filipinos Winning, but it Won’t Last Long: Anti-Filipino Violence and White Power in California’s Central Valley
Elizabeth Diaz, University of California, Berkeley, Reconfiguring Chicano Organizing in the Central Valley: Bakersfield College, Jess Nieto, and the 1980s
Sarahy Torres, University of California, Los Angeles, Women’s Organizing in Ventura County’s 1941 Lemon Strike

Unsettling Collections: Repatriation, Relationality, and Community

Peyton Beeli, “Hitherto unexplored and unknown country”: Knowledge, Power, and Exploration in American Archaeological Expeditions to the Yucatán, 1928-1930”
Emma Balda, “Acquiring Knowledge: Collecting and Relationality on 18th Century California Shores”
Ashley Ascencio, “Unearthing Identities: The Cemetery as Public History”

Contested Histories of Oceania: A Talanoa

Christen Sasaki, University of California, San Diego, Designing Paradise: Contested Histories of Aloha Wear
Alfred Flores, Harvey Mudd College, Militarized Memories
Brandon Reilly, Santa Monica College, Chamorus and the Colonial Encounter with Spain before 1700
Juliann Anesi, University of California, Los Angeles, Inclusion in Quotes: Sports and Disability

Jews in American Intellectual Life

Chair: Gregory Brown, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Yisroel Benporat, Yeshiva University, Judah Monis: America’s First Jewish Professor”
Gregory Brown, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Jewish-American immigrant identity and the historiography of the French Enlightenment, 1917-1955
Kenneth Cottrell, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Shared Struggles: Dr. King, Rabbi Rothschild, and Interfaith Civil Rights Leadership in Atlanta, 1958

Different Ways of Teaching

Sarah Keller, Washoe County School District, Vaguely Familiar and Mildly Ironic: Teaching Difficult Histories and Modern Global Issues in Middle School Social Studies
Casey Tokita, Arizona State University, A Struggle Over Contested Histories: Hawaiian Studies in Hawai’i Public Schools
Kay Hones, KeyInfo, Inc., Memory of Nightmares

Imagining Freedom, Images of Freedom

Nicholas A Fischer, Independent Scholar, Singing to a New Tune: Music from the Western Crossing at Quindaro
Derrick D. McKisick, East Texas A&M University, “A Struggle for Freedom: Freedmen Adoption and Independence in the Choctaw Nation
Caden Borgeson, California State University, San Marcos, Elastic Democracy: U.S. Internvention and the 1966 Coup in Ghana

Session II, Thursday, 9:45-11:15 a.m., Wright Hall, C-148

Plenary Session: Roundtable: “New Books in the Field(s)”

Chair: James Gregory, University of Washington
Visions of the Southland: A Year in Los Angeles County (University of Chicago, 2026) by William Deverell, University of Southern California
All Species of Knowledge: Discovery, Failure, and Natural History in the Pacific Ocean (Oxford University Press, 2026) by David Igler, University of California, Irvine
A Workplace of Their Own: Rockefeller, Roche, and Labor’s Battle Over Industrial Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2026) by Maria Montoya, New York University
Urban Borderlands: Multiracial Histories and Gendered Borders in Los Angeles (University of North Carolina Press, 2026) by Isabela Seong Leong Quintana, University of California, Irvine
The Boundless Biddy Mason: An Odyssey from Slavery to Freedom Across the American West (University of California Press, 2026) by Kevin Waite, University of Texas at Dallas
Worlds Unfolding: Science on the Page (Princeton University Press, 2026) by Jennifer A. Watts, The Huntington Library

Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m., Frank and Estella Beam Hall, Room 241, Camarillo Latino/a Scholars Luncheon

Marla Ramirez, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Banished Citizens: A History of the Mexican American Women Who Endured Repatriation

Session III, Thursday, 1-2:30 p.m.

Academic Publishing: A How-To Guide (Sponsored by the University of California Press)

Chair: Marc Rodriguez, Portland State University and the Pacific Historical Review
Mary Ann Irwin, California State University, East Bay and California History
Caddie Dufurrena, University of Nevada Press

Shaping Southern California

Elwing Gonzalez, Rio Hondo College, A. as Refuge: Vietnamese and Salvadoran Refugees in Los Angeles in the 1980s
Kenneth Marcus, University of LaVerne, Writers and the Central Avenue Renaissance in Los Angeles
Andrew Hernández, University of Southern California, Latinos for Klan: Race, Politics, and Grassroots Organizing in the San Diego Borderlands, 1980-1982

Memory, History, and Myth Making

Nancy Bowman, The Bush School, Lies, Lost Causes, and Threats to Democratic Culture and Memory
Armin Firouzi, Virginia Tech, Reading Against the Frame A Reflexive Method for Interpreting Queer Material Culture
Casey Pearlman, San Diego State University, Because of a Mug: The Contested Memory of September 11

Pathways in Undergraduate Research: Mentored History Projects on Empire, Culture, and Resistance from the University of California, Merced

Chair: David Rouff, University of California, Merced
Byron Hurte, University of California, Merced, Breaking the Rules One Drink at a Time: Prohibition in British Colonial Africa
Noe Rangel, University of California, Merced, “We are Prisoners in a Jail of Ice and Snow”: Dogs, Labor, and Loyalty 1880-1930
Ashley Cendejas, University of California, Merced, Rock & Resistance: Pinochet, Censorship and the Powerful Rock & Roll of Chile
Max Turkovich, University of California, Merced, Tracing Land Ownership in Merced’s Lost Chinatown 1872-1921

Gender and Sexuality: Law, Religion, and the State

Giada Pizzoni, European University Institute, Can Early Modern Women Teach Us How to Defy Sexual Harassment?
Adam T. Hogan, Texas Tech University, “Saving Sin City: The National Council of Churches and the ‘Catastrophe’ in Las Vegas”

The Religious Ordering of Eighteenth-Century British America

Chair/Comment: Michael Goode, Utah Valley University
Anna Brownlee, University of Wyoming, The Shadow SPG: Women and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic”
John Smolenski, University of California, Davis, Neolin’s Revival and Anti-Colonial Peace in Eighteenth-Century North America”
Spencer Wells, Southern Utah University, Liberty Interrupted: George Keith, the SPG, and the Politics of Speech in Eighteenth-Century British America

Being Citizens … Or Trying to Be: Indigenous People and Immigrants

Mary Ludwig, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Applied Lessons The Return of Alaska Natives from Carlisle Indian Industrial School
CamieJo Huber, San Francisco State University, Neither Foreign nor Citizen: Plains Indigenous Nations and the Racial Limits of U.S. Citizenship
Victoria Silva, Independent Scholar, From Exclusion to Debate: Early 20th-Century Immigration Laws and Their Enduring Impact on Borders and Citizenship

High/Low Politics, Courts, and Law

Stephen Zeigler, Independent Scholar, “How LBJ Destroyed JFK’s Vision for Civil Equity”
Joshua Jeffers, California State University, Dominguez Hills, Selective Sovereignty: Settler Colonialism, the High Court, and White-Victimhood Politics in the Midwest, 1976-2000
Joseph Garske, The Global Conversation, Unexpected Sources of American Legal Culture

Race, Labor, and Life in the Borderlands

Norwood Andrews, Independent Scholar, Borderlands Migration and Immobilized Labor: Toward a Reconsideration of Woody Guthrie’s Guiding Principles
Laura D. Gutiérrez, University of the Pacific, The First Braceros: Community Histories and Belonging in Stockton, California
Scott St. Marie, University of Cambridge, Bureaucratic Partition of the San Diego-Tijuana Border Crossing, 1929-1937

Session IV, Thursday, 2:45-4:15 p.m.

Author Meets Critics: Banished Citizens by Marla Ramirez

Panel Chair/Comment: Sonia Gomez, Santa Clara University
Marla Ramirez, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Author
Maggie Elmore, Baylor University, Critic
Laura Gutierrez, University of the Pacific, Critic
Natalia Molina, University of Southern California, Critic

A Fireside Chat with AHA Executive Director Sarah Weicksel

Individuals in the Stream of History

Mark Moreno, East Texas A&M University, “La Familia” and the Death of Eli Rosas: Gang Culture, Masculinity, and Murder in Silicon Valley
Christopher Elias, Carleton College, The Murder of John Shada: Xenophobia and Anti-Arab Violence in 1920s Nebraska
Jessica Krueger, Oregon State University, The Politics of Consumption and the American Dream: A Brief Account of Melvin Sembler’s Life

Health, Illness, Disability, and Contested Histories

Chair/Comment: Barbara Molony, Santa Clara University
Febe Pamonag, Western Illinois University, Escape and Return to the “Island of Pain”: Filipino Responses to the U.S. Colonial Government’s Anti-Leprosy Measures in the Philippines, 1900s-1930s”
Christin Hancock, University of Portland, Ideological Contestations of Health, Gender, and Motherhood in the 1920s
Kimberly Jensen, Western Oregon University, Contested Histories: Gender Nonconforming People and State-Coerced Sterilization in Oregon, 1910s-1930s

Erasure and Recovery: Archives, Libraries, and the Future of Community History

Chair/Comment: Claytee White, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Summer Cherland, South Mountain Community College, Community Influence and Local History: The South Phoenix Oral History Project
Jessica Salow, Arizona State University, Black Collections at Arizona State University Library: Triumphs and Challenges Starting a New Community-Based Archival Collection in Arizona”
Kristian Taketomo, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Voices of Tribal Gaming: An Oral History Project at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Anthony Pratcher II, University of Washington, Tacoma, Diggin’ in the Crates: Community Driven Archives and a Social History of the Metropolitan Southwest

Understanding Life, Living, and Lives in Asia

Chair: Farida Begum, University of Wyoming
Nicholas Fischer, Independent Scholar, Orinpikku Netsu: A History of Emotions: An Examination of Olympic Fever at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics
Run Gu, University of Tübingen, State Feminism, Sexual Governance, and the Limits of Legal Equality in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom
Jian Gao, Arizona State University, Emotional Lives Across the Pacific: A Chinese Transnational Household Between Tucson and Hong Kong, 1952–1967

Pedagogies of Complexity and Contestation: Lands, Peoples, and Institutions

Chair: Sierra Standish, University of Colorado, Boulder
Ashley Black, California State University, Stanislaus, Rewriting Conquest: Teaching Indigenous Agency in the Spanish–Aztec War
Erin Hughes, California State University, Stanislaus, Complex Narratives of Genocide: Memory, Evidence, and Politics in Developing an Assyrian Genocide Curriculum
Michael Weeks, University of Nevada, Reno, Bikes and Contested Spaces: Teaching Complexity Through Interviews about Fruita’s Recreational Boom
Jennifer Cullison, California State University, Stanislaus, “Nothing About Us, Without Us”: Teaching to Expand Narratives of your Campus’s History

Local History in California: Challenges, Interventions, and Results

Chair: José Alamillo, California State University, Channel Islands
Theresa Avila, California State University, Channel Islands
José Moreno, Northern Arizona University
Lily Anne Yumi Tamai, California State University, Channel Islands
Nicole Vines, California State University, Channel Islands

Churches, Religion, and Revivals

Lauren Coghlan, University of New Mexico, Returning to the End: Apocalyptic Rhetoric in Eleventh-Century England
Michael Lucas, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Transcending Violence: Wooden Churches and Resilience in Rusyn Carpathian Slovakia
Nicholas Freeman, Rawlings School of Divinity, The Great Hawaiian Revival: A Historical Survey of the Totality of Events of the Great Hawaiian Revival from 1836-1842

4:30-7:30 p.m., Wright Hall, C-148

Presidential Address: James Gregory, University of Washington

Sundown Towns in the American West: Tracing the Regional Dynamics of Black Exclusion

Awards Ceremony and Reception

FRIDAY

Session I, 8-9:30 a.m.

History Outside the Box

Naiara Bezerra-Gastesi, University of Southern California, Letters to Home: American Soldiers and Fantasies of Cuba During the Spanish-American War
Joseph Hall-Patton, University of New Mexico, From Battlefield to Career Field: Applying the History of American Violence on YouTube
Kay Hones, KeyInfo, Inc., Get Graphic!
Daniel Bubb, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Airports as a Sense of Place Through Hospitality and Architectural Design

Uneven Ground: Disputed Placemaking, Environment, and Race

Blair Rogers, Washington State University, Environments of Detainment: Haitians and Cubans in Miami’s Immigration Network, 1974-1984
Kelsey Hill, University of Nevada, Reno, Massacres and Mineral Extraction: Contested History at Peehee Mu’huh/Thacker Pass
Sarah Daisy Amador, Washington State University, Slum by the Sea: Building Community Space for Black and Brown Communities in Venice, 1960-1990
Michael Buse, University of California, Los Angeles, The Mission and The Spa: Tourism, Dispossession, and Anticolonial Struggle in Southern California

Health, Spirituality and Intellectual Traditions: Reckoning with the Archives from Africa

Chair: Oluwasola Daniels, University of California, Davis
Mathew Ayodele, Stanford University, Rigid Categories, Fluid Practices: Rethinking Yoruba Therapeutic Practitioners in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Southwestern Nigeria
Ibrahim Anoba, University of California, Davis, Inventing Òrìṣà Science: Olórìṣà Knowledge Production and the Making of Alternative Scientific Modernities in the Mid-Twentieth Century Nigeria
Oluwasola Daniels, University of California, Davis, Not Just Pathology, Not Just Pleasure: Yoruba Men’s Bodies and the Representation of African Bodies, 1902-1940

This Old Mediterranean: Helpful Hints, Tips, and Tricks for Teaching a More Reflective Ancient Mediterranean

Chair: William Burghart, University of Washington, Tacoma
Nikolaus Overtoom, Washington State University, Thinking about Parthia in the Teaching of Ancient History
Nick Rockwell, University of Colorado, Boulder, Customs and Constitutions in Herodotus’s Histories
Eugene Smelyansky, Washington State University, Mapping Trade and Travel in Ancient Afro-Eurasia

Asian Visions, Victimization, and Voyages

John E. Van Sant, University of Alabama, Birmingham, Sakuma Shozan and His Vision for Japan
Md Shamsudoha, Washington State University, The Journey of Rohingyas from Citizenship to Refugee through the Lens of History and Memories
Sutanwi Chatterjee, University of Houston, Pilgrims, Pathogens, and the Port: Environmental Crisis and Disease Control in Colonial Voyages in Colonial India, 1850-1940

Early America, The Atlantic World, and the Revolution

Joshua Frank Cardenas, University of New Mexico, Valencia, An Imperial Revolution in Hindsight: The Founding Fathers’ War on America, Indigenous Revolution, and the Return to Empire-Building
Dakota Ciolkosz, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Contested Waters: Feudalism, Property, Taxation, and Revolution along French Waterways 1760-1789
Nimrod Hoofien, University of California, Davis, Landed Friends: Utopian Community, Women’s Property, and Land Contention in Revolutionary Era New-York

Activism in Los Angeles

Zhihui Zou, Duke University, News Oil: Oil Industry of Los Angeles’s Presence in U.S. Newspapers, 1890-1930
Jose Luis Castro Padilla, University of California, Los Angeles, Father Thomas O’Dwyer: Catholic Activism before the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles
Robyn Fishman, University of California, Santa Barbara, Steering Their Own Course: Women’s Use of Technologies in the Los Angeles Voter Registration Drive of 1911

Enduring Battles Over 19^th Century America

Chair: James R. Grossman, American Historical Association
John Majewski, University of California, Santa Barbara, Contesting an Auction of Flesh and Soul
Benjamin Easton, Independent Scholar, “Racially Remembering Reconstruction: A Racecraft Reading of A.R. Waud’s “The Freedmen’s Bureau””
Chris Bolland, California State University, Sacramento, The Engine of Memory: The Dunning School, Women’s Associations, and the Cultural Construction of the Lost Cause”
Cristain Pires, California State University, Stanislaus, Mapping Manhood: Geography, Mobility, and Masculine Affirmation in Charles Ball’s Slavery in the United States

Friday, Session II, 9:45-11:15 a.m.

The Body as Property, Property as Ownership

Chair: Belinda Lum, Sacramento City College
Nicole Guidotti-Hernández, Northeastern University, The Body as Property, A Cigar Factory as Property: Mabel García’s 1901 Murder and Racial Capital
Ann Soon Choi, California State University, Northridge, Murder at Midcentury: The Murder of Sylvia Likens
Marisela Chavez, California State University, Pomona, Las Mujeres González: Mexican Immigrant Women, Family Stories, and Historical Memory in Twentieth Century Los Angeles

New Histories of Race, Gender, and Power in Modern America

Chair/Comment: Christopher Willoughby, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
David-James Gonzales, Brigham Young University, Breaking Down the Walls of Segregation: Mexican American Grassroots Politics and Civil Rights in Orange County, California
Nic John Ramos, University of Texas at Austin, Health as Property: Racial Capitalism and Sexual Liberalism in Los Angeles
Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, University of California, Irvine, Moving Mountains: Asian American and Pacific Islander Feminisms and the 1977 National Women’s Conference

California by Design: Race, Space, and Exclusion in the Postwar Era

Chair/Comment: Eileen Luhr, California State University, Long Beach
Minh Nguyen, California State University, Long Beach, The Perennial Road to Vietnamese America: Language, Identity, and Navigating American Society in Orange County after 1975
Lucille Curtis, California State University, Long Beach, A Man’s Home Is His Castle: The Political Culture of Exclusion and Belonging in California’s Proposition 14
Muhammad Rafi, University of California, Irvine, Policing an Image: Image-Making and Displacement at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics”

Reflections on the Scholarly Legacy of Dr. Quintard Taylor’s, In Search of a Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990

Chair/Comment: James Gregory, University of Washington
Brigida Blasi, University of Wyoming, American Heritage Center, Learning to See the Black West: Following Quintard Taylor’s Example
Casey Nichols, Texas State University, Why the Black West Matters: Dr. Quintard Taylor’s Impact on Studying Race in the U.S. West”
Herbert Ruffin II, Syracuse University, The Urban Archipelago: An Update on Quintard Taylor’s Last Publication
Turkiya Lowe, Independent Public Historian, More Than Black Cowboys: Quintard Taylor’s Legacy on Historic Preservation and Interpretation of Black Western History”

Project Socrates: An Experiment in Open Pedagogy

Chair: John Haberstroh, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
John Haberstroh, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Excursus: From Theory to Practice in an “Open Pedagogy” History Class
Jessica Ayala Venegas, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Socrates: Vision and Mission of an OER Database
Natalie Dechaine, Nathan Pormentira, and Emma Vermillion, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Researching out of Time: How Scaffolded “Research Logs” Bring Research to Life
EJ Decastro, Demetrius Khananisho Tolliver, and Adrien Pinlac, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Historical Timelines: What Are They Good For?

New Directions in Interdisciplinary Chicana/o/x/é History at UNM’s Chicana and Chicano Studies Graduate Program

Chair/Comment: Jose Luis Serrano Najera, University of New Mexico
Jose Luis Serrano Najera, University of New Mexico, The Impact of Interdisciplinary Chicana/o/x Studies Training on Chicana/o/x History Scholarship”
Divana Olivas, University of New Mexico, Archiving the Movimiento: Interdisciplinary Historical Practice and Community Collaboration in Chicana/o Studies
Natalia M. Toscano, University of New Mexico, Chicana/o/x Histories of Political Cultures: Chicanx-Zapatistas Transnational Coalitions towards Decolonial Horizons
Gustavo Garcia, University of New Mexico, Archives of Ungovernability: Music, Memory, and Movements

Roundtable: Doing Open History in the 21st Century

Chair/Comment: John Curry, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Urmi Willoughby, Pitzer College
Alison Scardino Belzer, Georgia Southern University
Monica Ketchum-Cardenas, Arizona Western College

Faith, Foodways, and Frontiers: Reimagining Cultural Exchange in Early 19th‑Century Borderlands

Chair/Comment: Citlali Sosa-Riddell, California State University, San Marcos
Christine Frazier, University of California, Riverside, Indigenous Space-Making in Mission San Luis Rey de Francia and the Asistencia de Pala, 1798-1834
Bianca Orozco, University of Oregon, Protestant Home Missions and Religious Competition During the California Gold Rush, 1849- 1859
Matthew Bozone, California State University, San Marcos, Borderlands Foodways: Eating and Cooking in Gold Rush California

Panel TBA on Las Vegas

Friday, 11:15 a.m.-1 p.m.

Western Association of Women Historians Luncheon, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m., Wright Hall C-148

Sarah Gold McBride, University of California, Berkeley, Hair and the Borders of Belonging: Long Hair, Facial Hair, and Fake Hair in Nineteenth-Century America

Friday Session III, 1-2:30 p.m.

History and Memory in the American West

Andrew McLeod, Independent Scholar, “Gold Rush Revolution: Revisiting the ‘Squatters’ Riot’”
Cooper Lennon Crane, University of California, Riverside, Canals, Citrus and Chinatowns—Building Southern California

Depression-Era America

Chair: Christopher Elias, Carleton College
Ragya Kaul, University of Washington, “Hindu” Women Accused: Vice Policing, Murder Investigations, and Sedition in the 1930s”
Kathie A. Schey, City of Huntington Beach, California, The “Unemployeds”: Homeless Workers’ Response in Depression Era Huntington Beach
Mia Tumbaga, San Diego State University, Okie Discrimination in California: Questions of Race, Class, and Whiteness in 1930’s America”

The Struggle for Racial and Political Belonging in the West

Simon Russell, California State University, Sacramento, Unity in Struggle: A History of Sacramento’s Postwar Political Left
Benjamin Schmack, University of Kansas, Modernization through Deportation: Removal Processes and the Whitening of Arizona
Trent Thurston, Utah State University, Racism Under-Mines Utah Unions

Over the Water, Under the Table: Illegal Economics in US-Caribbean Relations, 1655-1915

Chair: Shae Smith Cox, Texas A&M University
Sabrina Waite, Texas A&M University, Henry Furniss, American Business, and the Lead up to the Occupation of Haiti
Jesse Flecha, Texas A&M University, Slavery After Victory: Cuba, Reconstruction, and the Second Republican Rift of the 1870s
Will Lourcey, Texas A&M University, Smuggler’s Run: Colonial Trade Between British America and the West Indies
Comment: Gregory A. Daddis, Texas A&M University

Ideologies and Empires

Chair: E. Mark Moreno
John Curry, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, The Life of Ünsi Hasan Efendi (d. 1723): Failed Saint, or Indicator of Structural Change in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Empire?
Rubin McClain and Mae Elise Cannon, Churches for Middle East Peace, Inventing Empty Lands: Terra Nullius, Manifest Destiny, and the Rhetoric of Return
Madeline Mallindine, University of New Mexico, Ideological Resistance: Psychoanalysis in Argentina’s Dirty War
Claire Balmas, University of Colorado, Denver, Hugo Chavez; Superstition, Magic, and Political Power in Venezuela

Rights, Revolutions, and Counterrevolutions in America

Mia Michael, Wayne State University, The Domestic Workers Movement: Mobilizing Communities, Righting Wrongs, and Making History
Greta de Jong, University of Nevada, Reno, Manufacturing Tyranny: Racist Resistance and the Myth of Federal Overreach in the Boston School Desegregation Case, 1974–1985
Rahima Schwenkbeck, College of Southern Nevada, Work Sucks: Convenience Store Horror and Late-Capitalist America
Anthony Taylor, Howard University, Contested Citizenship: Black WWI Veterans, State Violence, and the Struggle Over Rights in Postwar America”

Insights into China

Mason E. Hinsdale, University of California, Berkeley, Manufacturing Crisis: Marketing, Lobbying, and the Justification of Semi-Colonial Profits in the Chinese Silk Industry, 1912–1931
Alexandra Noi, University of California, Santa Barbara, Chinese Carceral Eugenics: The Biology and Ideology of Transforming Human Nature
Xinli Zhang, University of Hawai’i, A Daoist Confucian: The Formation and Development of Gentry Class in North China Since the Yuan Dynasty

Panel TBA on Las Vegas

Friday, Session IV, 2:45-4:15 p.m.

Cold Wars, Nukes, and Reagan

Curtis Linarez, University of Nevada, Reno, Northern Nevada’s Vietnam War Response
Chester Pach, Ohio University, Ronald Reagan and Race: Reflections and Reconsiderations
Scott White, Liberty University, From Hiroshima to the Hydrogen Bomb: The Evolution of “Truth” in U.S. Nuclear Policy
Amanda Hass, Independent Scholar, Bright Lights and A Thousand Suns: The Complicated History of Las Vegas and Nuclear Weapons Testing

Histories of Nevada

Antonio Flores, University of Nevada, Reno, “Under Every Bed:” Birchers in America’s Biggest Little City
Aubrey Garrard, University of Nevada, Reno, Silicosis as Sensationalism: Delamar, Nevada’s Undeserved Reputation
Benjamin Humphries, University of Nevada, Reno, Water Flowing Underground: The Carey Act, Law, and Groundwater in Nevada in the 1910s
Andrew Russell, Independent Scholar, Like Friends, Like Foes: Japanese Americans in Nevada Through World War II

New Histories of Latin America

Chair: E. Mark Moreno, East Texas A&M University
Meghann F. Chávez, University of New Mexico, A Sudden Abundance of Hair Salons
Romina I. Samplina, Independent Scholar, Gendered Threats: Women, Political Action, and the Consolidation of State Power in Peru
Isabelle Dahl, Sam Houston State University, Effeminate as Insult: Manifest Destiny, Latin Americans, and Gendered Racism
Edrea Mendoza Quintero, University of New Mexico, “Oponiéndose con un rechazo ciego, Cerrado e irracional”: National Sex Education Programs in Mexico in the 1970s & 1980s

New Directions in Early American Environmental History

Chair: Tyler Parry, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Urmi Willoughby, Pitzer College, Mosquitoes and Malaria in Early New England
Eric Herschthal, University of Utah, The Factory or the Field? U.S. Cotton Slavery and the Birth of the Climate Crisis
Tyler Parry, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, “Skillful” and “Very Ingenious”: How Enslaved People Used the Environment to Contest Interspecies Violence in the Antebellum South

Perspectives on Northern California

Lynette Parker, Alpha Nu Omega, Our Hands Were In It: Chronicling the contributions of Alpha Nu Omega to the Civil Rights Movement in the Oakland Bay Area
Russell Peck, University of California, San Diego, Reclaiming Dams: Irrigation, Hydroelectricity, and the Hydropolitics of Dam Construction and Removal in Twentieth-Century Northern California”
Jacob Adams, City College of San Francisco, It’s a Day in the Sun: California, Asian Markets, and America’s New Global Direction in 1898.

The Politics and Perils of Immigration Restriction

Sevag Derderian, Rose & Alex Pilibos Armenian School, Traversing American Modernity: Armenian Immigrants and the Politics of Racial Classification in Progressive Era America
Kim Kennedy, Grand Canyon University, “Our National Tradition”: Immigration Restriction and Contested Historical Truths in Late Twentieth-Century America
Justin Davis, Boise State University, Gilded Age American Religion: How Jingoism, the Gospel of Wealth, and New Thought Collided with Immigrants and the Social Gospel

Contesting the “Unnatural Invisibility” of Asian Women in American History

Kahleia Corpuz, University of California, Riverside, Cho-Cho-San’s “Little Brown Sister”: The Racialization of the Filipina in American Media, 1903-1905
Michelle Okawa, University of California, Riverside, Japanese American Beauty & Public Memory in the Los Angeles Nisei Week Queen’s Program
Abby Gayle Reynoso Principe, University of California, Riverside, To Love and Be Loved: Archiving 90’s Filipina/o/x Activism for the Amado Khaya Initiative
Sarah Lee-Yom, University of California, Riverside, From Child-Rearing to Boycotting: Re-examining the Role of Korean-American Women in the March 1^st Movement

Native Spaces, Places, and Faces

Vera Parham, American Military University, Reclaiming Native Space: The Seattle Indian Center and Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center
Howard Dorre, University of Massachusetts, Boston, The Meaning of Lyncoya: The Name and Narrative of Andrew Jackson’s Indian “Son”
Amy Davey, California State University, Sacramento, The Linnen Files: Recovering Native Voices in Progressive Era Reservation Investigations

2026 Conference Program