2026 American Studies Newsletter
Message from the Chair
Department Spotlights
Faculty Kudos
Alumni Class Notes
Message from the Chair
Greetings Alumni and Friends,
This year brings us to the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This is a time when it is ever more important to bring to bear the tools of our own field to understand the fundamental diversity and complexity of American life starting the centuries before the signing up to the present. By understanding the varieties of ways that we express ourselves — living, loving, making meaning and producing culture — our tools reveal the Declaration’s silences and promises, many of which were unfulfilled, by design, from the very start. Coming to grips with how we live now and how we got here appears in the accomplishments and ongoing work of our community.
Jamie Cohen-Cole
Department Chair
Department Spotlights
Alumnus Mann Explores Black Speculative Fiction
Justin Mann, PhD ’18, authored the new book Breaking the World (Duke University Press, 2026). Foregrounding how the contemporary security state renders Black life insecure, he theorizes worldbreaking: speculative narrative, aesthetic and ethical strategies that Black writers, musicians and artists employ to unmake the processes by which state and parastate agents augment and build up the tools, techniques and infrastructures intended to make people safer.
Alumna Author Duffon Explores Addiction
In her new book Addiction, Inc. (University of Chicago Press, 2026), Emily Dufton, PhD ’14, explains how medication-assisted treatment, a promising avenue of treatment for addiction, emerged during President Richard Nixon’s war on drugs in 1971 as a radical experiment in public health, when hundreds of federally-funded treatment clinics opened nationwide. Dufton then explores how these nationalized clinics subsequently gave way to an immensely profitable private industry that offers poor care at high costs to an insufficient number of people.
Wiley's Book Emphasizes Education
Access to educational resources has been a tool of liberation for Black Americans from the antebellum period to the present. In her book Model Schools in the Model City (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2026), Amber N. Wiley, PhD ’11, emphasizes the value of education as a means for social equality—Black Americans wanted the American Dream to apply to them, and equal opportunity for quality education was at the forefront of making that dream a reality. Model Schools chronicles how Black Washingtonians used public education as a means of racial uplift in the face of entrenched white resistance and repeated assertions of white supremacy.
Faculty Kudos
Emily Bock held a fellowship at the Institute for for Citizens and Scholars
Jamie Cohen-Cole launched and co-edits the journal History of Social Science, which examines the transformation of the social sciences since the early 20th century.
James McMaster published Racial Care: On Asian American Suffering and Survival (Duke University Press, 2025).
Gayle Wald authored the book This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children’s Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement (University of Chicago Press, 2025).
Alumni Class Notes
- Shari Diamond, BA ’05, is director of product marketing at tech company Apollo.io. She leads strategic initiatives to help take the company upmarket at a time of aggressive growth for the company.
- Ramzi Fawaz, PhD ’12, debuted a podcast, Nerd from the Future, intended for both non-academic and scholarly audiences. It aims to make the university and its intellectual gifts available to everyone, hence the tagline: “It’s time the university came to you.”
- Anne Peterson, MA ’80, is the curator of photographs at the DeGolyer Library, SMU, Dallas. It is a wonderful field of study for her as it combines history and history of art at various times.
- Brooke Schlesinger, BA ’14, resides in Sydney, Australia, where she is an associate director at YouGov, leading research on emerging cultural and societal trends. In her role, she has conceived and led major studies on topics ranging from AI and human relationships to national value systems. She is engaged to Josh Kraindler, and the couple will marry in August 2026.
- Randy Swisher, PhD ’78, retired after 20 years as executive director of the American Wind Energy Association. In retirement, he taught wind energy technology at the Catholic University School of Engineering and continues to serve on the board of directors for two non-profit organizations.