American Studies | Faculty

Associate Professor

My research focuses on the biological and social history of African Americans living in the 19th and 20th century urban US. Specifically, I examine the health consequences of poverty and inequality through skeletal and documentary data analysis. I co... [More]

Department Chair, Anthropology

Prof. Dent is the author of Chesapeake Prehistory: Old Traditions, New Directions and a significant number of other publications on the archaeology of the Chesapeake and Middle Atlantic regions. He maintains interests in both prehistoric and historic... [More]

Associate Professor

Eileen Findlay graduated from Oberlin College and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she held a Jacob Javits fellowship. Findlay's first book, Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870-1920 was published with ... [More]

Associate Professor

Prof. Franz holds degrees in museum studies and American Civilization from Brown University. She specializes in 20th Century US cultural history with a focus on popular culture and the history of technology. She's also an active curator and public hi... [More]

Assistant Professor

Kate Haulman is a historian of early North America whose teaching and research interests also include women’s/gender, social and cultural history. She is the author of The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America (University of North Carolin... [More]

Assistant Professor

Professor Kakoudaki teaches interdisciplinary courses in literature and film, visual culture, and the history of technology and new media. Her interests include cultural studies, science fiction, apocalyptic narratives, and the representation of race... [More]

Professor

Language in everyday life is shaped by material conditions, by ideology, by power, by resistance– and by yearnings that are never extinguished by social regulation. Professor Leap's studies of American Indian English, language and AIDS, “gay men’s En... [More]

Associate Professor

Author of Fettered Genius: The African American Bardic Poet from Slavery to Civil Rights, Keith D Leonard did his master's in English at UNC Chapel and his PhD at Stanford.His publications, presentations, and courses have revolved around his study of... [More]

Associate Professor

Professor Noble's teaching and research interests include American literature, culture studies, and gender studies, with a particular emphasis on the construction of sexuality in nineteenth-century American women's literature. She is the author of Th... [More]

Assistant Professor

Professors Sims has received numerous awards and prizes, including the Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize for Excellence in Teaching and the Charles Warren Center Dissertation Writing Fellowship. She has served as tutor, research assistant, and writing instr... [More]

Assistant Professor

Ed Smith is a third-generation Washingtonian and has been teaching at American University since 1969. He is also a Civil War, African-American Cultural Heritage, and Art History Lecturer and Study Tour Leader for The Smithsonian Institution, The Nati... [More]

Director of American Studies

Katharina Vester is Assistant Professor of History and Director of the American Studies Program at American University in Washington, D.C. She specializes in cultural theory, transnational studies, and the dynamics of power in everyday practices. She... [More]

Professor

Brett Williams began her work as an anthropologist working among migrant farm workers in Illinois, exploring how they coped with terrible poverty and helping them organize a lettuce boycott and raise money for a halfway house. Since coming to Washing... [More]

Assistant Professor