A Word from the Chair

I welcome you back to the Department of History at the University of Rochester as we begin a

new academic year and celebrate the arrival of three new colleagues to our faculty.

Assistant professor Melanie Chambliss received her PhD at Yale University and will teach African--

American intellectual and cultural history, in addition to the history of ideas reflected in the

collections of the major archival centers dedicated to the African-American experience. Her

many recognitions include a prestigious ALCS fellowship to work on her book examining the

history of African-American archives in the US and a recent grant award allowing her to digitize several of the leading archival collections housed at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Meanwhile, assistant professor Jed Kuhn joins the faculty with a PhD from Indiana University and research specializations that include Indigenous Studies, the American West and US-Mexico borderlands, and the history of gender and sexuality. He is at work on a book that examines the overlooked relationships that developed between Mexican-Americans and Native Americans in the 19th - and 20th-century American West. His work has been recognized by fellowship support from the Institute for Citizens and Scholars (formerly known as the Woodrow Wilson Foundation) and the Centre for the Study of the United States at the University of Toronto.

Third, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Molly Ball as assistant professor of history and director of our growing Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. She received her PhD in Latin American history at UCLA, with a focus on economic history, demographic change, and migration history in Brazil. Her Navigating Life and Work in Old Republic São Paulo (University of Florida Press, 2020) has been recognized for its pioneering study of migration flows into urban Brazil in the 20th century, as well as its assessment of the effects that early policy decisions in Brazil had on current forms of urbanization and inequality. Her work has been supported by the National Security Education Program and the Fulbright-Hays Program of the US Department of Education. Please give me a hand in welcoming each of our new faculty to the University of Rochester.