Home / Faculty / Research Specialties

Faculty by Research Specialization

The Department of History at UC Santa Cruz is known for its innovative research and exemplary scholarship. Our faculty work at the cutting edge of their respective fields, covering a wide variety of geographic, temporal, and thematic fields of study. The areas of specialization listed here are by no means an exhaustive list of our scholastic interests. Rather, they highlight the diverse and often overlapping ideas and approaches we explore within our teaching and research.

Muriam H Davis
  • Title
    • Associate Professor
  • Division Humanities Division
  • Department
    • History Department
  • Affiliations Center for the Middle East and North Africa (CMENA)
  • Phone
    831-459-4257
  • Email
  • Office Location
    • Stevenson College Academic Building, 212
  • Office Hours Winter 2024: on leave
  • Mail Stop Stevenson Academic Services
  • Mailing Address
    • 1156 High Street
    • Santa Cruz CA 95064
  • Faculty Areas of Expertise North Africa, Middle East Studies, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Capitalism, European Studies
  • Courses HIS 154: Postcolonial North Africa, HIS 156B: Modern Arab Thought, HIS 194W: Social Movements in the Middle East, HIS 184B: Race and Anti-Racism in Europe, HIS 170C: From the Trenches to the Casbah: France and its Empire in the 20th Century, HIS 252: Republicanism and its Discontents, HIS 262: The Contours of the New Middle East History

Research Interests

My research interests focus on development, decolonization and race in North Africa. My first book, Markets of Civilization: Islam and Racial Capitalism in Algeria will be published with Duke University Press in 2022. I am currently working on the history of the social sciences and decolonization, with a particular focus on the discipline of sociology.

Biography, Education and Training

2004-2006: MA in Arab Studies, Georgetown University

2006-2008: MA in Culture and Theory, University of California, Irvine

2008-2015: PhD in History, NYU 

2015-2016: Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow, European University Institute 

Selected Publications

Books:

Markets of Civilization: Racial Capitalism and Islam in Algeria, Duke University Press.

 

Co-editor of North Africa and the Making of Europe: Governance, Institution and Culture. Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2018. 

 

Selected Recent Articles:

 

“Histoire et capitalisme racial :un entretien," Marronnages, Vol. 3, No. 1, Winter 2024.

 

“Frantz Fanon the Sociologist? Algeria, Tunisia and the Making of a Discipline," POMEPS Studies 53, Fall 2024.

 

"Race and Decolonization in North Africa," Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, Spring 2023.

 

“‘Algiers and the Algerian Desert: Decolonization and Territorial Planning in France, 1958-1962,” Journal of Modern History, Fall 2023. 

 

Recent Media Appearances/Writings:

 

LARB, “The US Academy and the Provincialization of Frantz Fanon,” 2023.

 

 Al-Jazeera Plus, “What you Don’t Hear about France’s Muslims,” 22 April 2022.