 |
The History Department offers courses
in African, American, Asian, European, Latin American and
Mediterranean history in a curriculum that reflects the
special interests and backgrounds of its faculty. History
majors also have access to several special collections in
The Claremont Colleges' fine libraries, including those that
hold Renaissance, Scandinavian and Asian materials.
Sidney Lemelle teaches courses on African history and the
African Diaspora and is the author of Pan-Africanism for
Beginners and co-editor of Class, Culture and Nationalism
in the Pan-African Diaspora. Pamela H. Smith concentrates
her research on early modern Europe and the history of
science. She is the author of The Business of Alchemy:
Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire and The Body
of the Artisan: Art and Science in the Scientific
Revolution.
Victor Silverman, who offers courses on the modern United
States, international relations, and labor history, has
written Imagining Internationalism in American and British
Labor as well as works on Jewish history and California. He
currently is making Screaming Queens: The Riot at
Compton’s Cafeteria, a documentary film about a 1966 San
Francisco riot that launched a movement for transgender
rights. Miguel Tinker Salas, who teaches both introductory
and specialized courses on Latin America, is the author of
In the Shadow of the Eagles: Sonora and the Transformation
of the Border during The Porfiriato. He has been
researching the transformation of northern Mexico from an
internal frontier to a border area facing the United States.
Helena Wall is a scholar of American social and cultural
history, particularly the place of the family in colonial
society, and she is the author of Fierce Communion: Family
and Community in Early America. Kenneth Wolf, whose courses
treat different facets of the medieval Mediterranean and the
history of Christianity, is the author of Christian Martyrs
in Muslim Spain, Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early
Medieval Spain, Making History: the Normans and their
Historians in Eleventh-century Italy and The Poverty of
Riches: St. Francis of Assisi Reconsidered. Robert Woods
’67 offers courses on early modern Europe and England, the
history of Western civilization and the development of legal
jurisprudence, and he does research on late medieval and
early modern English legal history and the Tudor polity.
Samuel Yamashita offers an introductory survey of
traditional Asia and several other courses on Japan; his
current research is on Confucian academies in early modern
Japan, bushido, and the modern Japanese state's
appropriation of Confucian and warrior discourse. He is a
co-translator of The Four-Seven Debate: An Annotated
Translation of the Most Famous Controversy in Korean
Neo-Confucian Thought, and his Master Sorai's Responsals,
a translation of an eighteenth-century Confucian scholar's
letters to his prince, was recently published.
Pomona’s history majors typically do graduate work in what
are regarded as the country’s top graduate history programs.
They also attend the best law and professional schools and
some enter government service. The latter include Julian
Nava ’51, U.S. ambassador to Mexico during the Carter
administration, and William Lane ’42, ambassador to
Australia during the Reagan presidency. History alumni have
distinguished themselves in other fields as well: Harry
Stein ’70, who writes for Esquire, and Ved Mehta ’56, who
wrote for The New Yorker, both majored in history at Pomona.
|
