History Department faculty members published articles, wrote review essays, and gave conference papers in Europe, Latin America, China, and the United States in 2008.

Dr. Thomas Barton delivered at paper at a session of the Episcopus Society at the 43rd International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, Michigan, entitled “Business as Usual: Bishops and Their Men in Two Iberian Dioceses.” He reviewed and sent off the proofs for his article "Constructing a Diocese in the Post-Conquest Landscape: A Comparative Approach to Lay Tithe Ownership" forthcoming in The Journal of Medieval History. He also continued to work on his book project, presently entitled Colonizing Islam: Conquest, Consolidation, and the Struggle for Authority in the Crown of Aragon, by reading and transcribing facsimiles of parchments and codex pages retrieved from the National Historical Archive in Madrid, and worked on drafts of two article projects. He has recently been invited to present at the University of the South's Sewanee Medieval Colloquium and the American Society of Church History in Montreal.

Dr. Jonathan Conant completed an article, “The Chiaroscuro of Transmission: Europe and the African Cult of Saints, ca. 350-900,” currently under review for publication in a leading peer-reviewed journal. He has a forthcoming review of Kevin Uhalde’s Expectations of Justice in the Age of Augustine in a forthcoming issue of Speculum. He made several research trips to Washington D.C. and Los Angeles and is finishing his proposal for his book, Staying Roman: Africa and the Mediterranean, ca. 439-700. In January 2008 he participated in a round table discussion on the use of written documents by laypeople in the early middle ages at the annual meeting of the Medieval Academy of America in Vancouver, Canada, and in November he will travel to England to attend a workshop on the same subject.

Dr. Colin Fisher published an entry on urban parks in the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World, 1750 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). He also wrote a review essay, entitled “A Refined, Deepened, and Updated Kerner Commission Report,” on Janet L. Abu-Lughod's book Race, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles for H-Urban. He has a forthcoming review of Chad Montrie's book Making a Living: Work and Environment in the United States in the Journal of American History. He continues making progress on his book: Subaltern Nature Tourism. He also is finishing a chapter, “Race and U.S. Environmental History,” which will be published in A Companion to American Environmental History, ed. Douglas Sackman (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2009). He gave a conference paper entitled “John Muir as Efficiency Expert: Wilderness Preservation During the Progressive Era and the Conservation of American Labor” at the Southwestern Social Science Association, Las Vegas, Nevada (March 2008). This October he will participate in a roundtable on race, place, and the environment at the Western History Association annual meeting.

Dr. Michael Gonzalez published “Refuting the Myth of California Indolence: The Test Case of Los Angeles and Environs, 1821-1846,” Spanish Traces (September 2007). He wrote two review essays published in the Western Historical Quarterly (Winter 2008) and The Pacific Historical Review. He served as a reader for the University of Oklahoma Press and submitted two articles to leading peer-reviewed journals: “War and the Making of History: The Case of Mexican California, 1821-1846,” and “Hydras! Tigers! and Bears! The Political Imagery of Mexican California, 1821-1846.” His future project is an article comparing American right-wing extremism with Islamic extremism.

Dr. James Gump made research trips to South Africa, the Netherlands, and Minnesota in order to prepare his book manuscript entitled, “Third Force Strategy: Counterinsurgency Campaigns in South Dakota and South Africa, 1973-1994” for Paradigm Publishers. He also reviewed over a dozen books in 2007 for the American Historical Review, the International Journal of African Historical Studies, the Journal of Social History, and CHOICE.

Dr. Molly McClain published “Love, Friendship, and Power: Queen Mary II’s Letters to Frances Apsley,” The Journal of British Studies 47, no. 3 (July 2008); “The Bishop’s School, 1909-2009,” The Journal of San Diego History (hereafter JSDH) 53, no. 4 (2008); “A National City Investor: Theron Parsons (1805-1893),” JSDH 53, no. 3 (2008); and “‘Liberty Station’ and the Naval Training Center in San Diego,” JSDH 54, no. 2 (2008). She submitted another article, “‘Going Dutch’: Culture and Identity in the Life of Queen Mary II” to a leading peer-reviewed journal and published review articles in Seventeenth-Century News and the San Diego Union-Tribune. She has been invited to give a paper at the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Bangor in 2009. She continues to serve as chair of the History Department, director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program, and co-editor of The Journal of San Diego History.

Dr. Clara Oberle joins the Department of History in 2008-09. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University with a dissertation entitled, “City in Transit: Ruins, Railways, and the Search for Order in Postwar Berlin, 1945-1948,” (2006). She is a former fellow at the Center for Metropolitan Studies and History, Berlin; the Remarque Institute, New York University; and the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, Princeton University.

Dr. Kenneth Serbin did a book tour in Brazil from August 7-15, 2008, to launch Padres, celibato e conflito social: uma história da Igreja católica no Brasil, the Portuguese translation of his award-winning book Needs of the Heart: A Social and Cultural History of Brazil’s Clergy and Seminaries (Notre Dame, 2006). The book was issued by Companhia das Letras, Brazil’s top publisher. Brazil is the world’s largest Catholic country. Dr. Serbin did a book signing at the Livraria Martins Fontes in downtown São Paulo and gave presentations at the Centro Cultural de Brasília (a Jesuit think tank), the Universidade Candido Mendes (a Catholic institution in Rio de Janeiro), and the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo. He granted an interview to Revista Instituto Humanitas Unisinos and appeared on the hour-long TV program Arena Livre, aired on August 18. The week-in-review section of the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo featured a full-page interview with Dr. Serbin on July 27. While in Brazil Dr. Serbin, who is the Immediate Past President of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA), also helped lay plans for the organization’s 10th International Congress, to be held in Brasília in July 2010 in conjunction with the city’s 50th anniversary. Supported by grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright-Hays program, and the University of San Diego, Dr. Serbin spent his sabbatical conducting research and writing a book on the lives of ex-revolutionaries who resisted the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985) and who now participate in the social mainstream. A portion of his research, the article “Mainstreaming the Revolutionaries: National Liberating Action and the Shift from Resistance to Democracy in Brazil, 1964-Present,” was accepted for publication in the forthcoming edited volume “Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Moving From War to Peace” (Routledge). Dr. Serbin presented versions of this article at the BRASA 9th International Congress, over which he presided at Tulane University from March 27-29, and at the international seminar “1968 – 40 anos depois: História e Memória” (1968 – 40 Years After: History and Memory) at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

Dr. Kathryn Statler wrote a review essay, “Triumph Imagined,” on Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 for Diplomatic History (January 2008). She also presented some of her research from her next project “Lafayette's Ghost: A History of Franco-American Cultural Diplomacy” at the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association in August 2008.

Dr. Yi Sun published “The Impoverishment of Women’s Education in China” (in Chinese) in Modern China Studies (Winter 2006/07) and “The ‘Pink Collar’ Women: Resurgence of Prostitution in China’s Era of Economic Modernization” (in Chinese) in Modern China Studies (Fall 2008). She presented a paper entitled “From the New Culture to the New Economy: The Postponed Liberation of Chinese Women” at a History Conference (sponsored by Shanghai University and Chinese Historians in the United States) in Shanghai, China, in June 2008. She also chaired and served as the discussant for a panel, “War Memory as the Burden of the Past” at the Pacific Coast Branch American Historical Association Conference in August 2008. She presented a paper at The Third World Studies Conference in Lima, Peru, in November 2007, entitled “From ‘Iron Rice Bowls to Plastic Cups’—a Historical Inquiry of Chinese Women’s Rights to Employment.” She has been invited to give a talk, “Deciphering China: The Complexities and Dilemmas of its Modernization” to USD’s Puente de Oro Society in September 2008. She continues to serve as the coordinator for the Asian Studies Minor at USD as well as the associate editor for the Asian section of the Journal of Third World Studies.