Americas and Africa

The Americas and Africa caucus invites students to explore the complex history of intercultural encounter, exchange, and conflict that connects South, Central, and North America and the diverse nations of Africa. Courses in this concentration locate these regions within larger global movements of people, goods, and ideas. Major topical themes in the concentration include Indigenous history, African diaspora, immigration, gender, labor, religion, social movements, politics, and critical history of race. Courses in this concentration extend from the colonial era to the modern day and reflect interdisciplinary approaches to historical practice.
Major Requirements
The history major requires a minimum of 12 unique courses. At least eight of the 12 courses must be upper-division (HIS 100-199). A maximum of four courses, including the introductory survey course, may be lower-division (HIS 1-99).
Major Planning Worksheet
Copy a History Major Planning Worksheet and Sample Academic Plans to your UCSC Google Drive.
Region of Concentration: Americas and Africa (6 courses)
I. One lower-division introductory survey course:
- HIS 10A, United States History to 1877
- HIS 10B, United States History, 1877 to 1977
- HIS 11A, Latin America: Colonial Period
- HIS 11B, Latin America: National Period
- HIS 12, Introduction to Latino American History (Effective Fall 2022)
- HIS 30, The Making of Modern Africa
All of the above courses satisfy the Ethnicity and Race (ER) general education requirement.
II. Four additional Americas and Africa courses, three of which must be upper-division
III. One Americas and Africa Comprehensive Requirement
Historical Skills and Methods (1 course)
IV. HIS 100, Historical Skills and Methods
HIS 100 introduce history majors to historical methods and provides preparation for advanced historical research. Students develop critical reading, historical analysis, research, and disciplinary writing skills. HIS 100 also satisfies the Textual Analysis and Interpretation (TA) general education requirement.
Students who enter UCSC as frosh are expected to complete HIS 100 by the end of their second year. Transfer students are expected to complete HIS 100 no later than their second term at UCSC.
Catalog of Course Requirements
The History Catalog of Course Requirements indicates what region(s) of concentration and what chronological distribution requirement(s) individual history courses may apply toward.
Breadth Requirements (4 courses)
V. Two courses from each of the remaining two regions of concentration:
Upper-Division Elective (1 course)
One additional upper-division history course of your choice from any of the three regions of concentration
Distribution Requirements
Of the 12 courses required for the major, at least three must meet chronological distribution requirements. One must be set before 600 C.E., and two must be set in periods prior to the year 1800 C.E.
Intensive Major Option
The intensive history major offers students a pathway to enrich their study of history, refine their skills in writing and research, and receive a designation on their transcripts that signals their ambition and accomplishment to potential employers and graduate schools. All history majors are eligible to declare the intensive track, including junior transfers. If a student attempts but does not complete the intensive track they may still graduate with a standard history degree, provided the appropriate major coursework has been completed.

- Title
- Professor Emeritus
- Research Professor of History
- Division Humanities Division
- Department
- History Department
- Affiliations Oakes College, Community Studies Program, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Merrill College, Center for Labor and Community
- Phone 831-459-4645 (office)
- Office Location
- Stevenson College Academic Building, 222
- Office Hours Spring 2023: Wednesdays, 3-5pm and by appointment
- Mail Stop Stevenson Academic Services
- Mailing Address
- 1156 High Street
- Santa Cruz CA 95064
- Faculty Areas of Expertise Immigration, Class, Colonialism, Discrimination and Inequality, History, Labor and Social Movements, US History
- Courses HIS 80X: The Civil Rights Movement: Grassroots Change and American Society, HIS 100: Historical Skills and Methods, HIS 123: Immigrants and Immigration in U.S. History, HIS 166: Northern Ireland: Communities in Conflict, HIS 190Z: The Long Civil Rights Movement, HIS 201: Directed Research Colloquium, HIS 210B: Readings in U.S. History, HIS 215C: Topics in American History: U.S. Immigration and Ethnic History
Research Interests
U.S. immigration and working-class history, with a particular focus on the Irish experience in America; ethnicity and race in U.S. history, including the history of movements for racial justice; transnational history of diasporic radicalisms; Irish history and politics.
Biography, Education and Training
B.A. Reed College
M.A. University of Warwick
Ph.D. UCLA
Honors, Awards and Grants
- Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title for 2016
- President, Southwest Labor Studies Association, 2008-2012
- National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, 2009
- UCSC Social Sciences "Golden Apple" Outstanding Teaching Award, 1997
- Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title for 1994
Selected Publications
- "W. E. B. Du Bois and the Irish Revolution: Anticolonial Activism in New York, 1916-1920," in Patrick Mannion and Fearghal McGarry, eds., The Irish Revolution: A Global History (New York: New York University Press, 2022), 400-424.
- "Irish Revolution and American Empire: Frank Walsh’s ‘American Imperialism,’" in Darragh Gannon and Fearghal McGarry (eds.), Ireland 1922: Independence, Partition, Civil War. (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2022), 43-47.
- "A Roundtable on Lucy Salyer’s Under the Starry Flag,” with Paul A. Kramer, Amy S. Greenberg, Daniel Margolies, Torrie Hester, and Lucy Salyer. Passport: The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review 51, No. 1 (April 2020): 8-18.
- Irish Nationalists in America: The Politics of Exile, 1798-1998 (Oxford University Press, 2016; paperback 2019).
- "A Tale of Two Cities: Exporting the Irish Revolution to Chicago and Buenos Aires," History Ireland (2019): 61-64.
- "Lala Lajpat Rai, Indian Nationalism, and the Irish Revolution: The View from New York, 1914-1920," in Enrico Dal Lago, Róisín Healy, and Gearóid Barry (eds.), 1916 in Global Context: An Anti-Imperial Moment (Routledge, 2018), 62-75.
- "Irish American Working Class," Oxford Research Encyclopedia in American History (Oxford University Press, October 2017).
- "Donald Trump and Enda Kenny Celebrate a Tense St. Patrick’s Day," The Conversation, March 15, 2017.
- "Remembering 1916 in America: The Easter Rising's Many Faces, 1919-1962," in Richard Grayson and Fearghal McGarry (eds.), Remembering 1916: The Easter Rising, the Somme and the Politics of Memory (Cambridge University Press, 2016), 138-52.
- "Allegiance, Dual Citizenship and the Ethnic Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy," in Ronald Bayor (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of American Immigration and Ethnicity (Oxford University Press, 2016). (Also published on Oxford Handbooks Online, January 2014), 375-97.
- "The Easter Rising and New York's Anticolonial Nationalists," in Miriam Nyhan Grey (ed.), Ireland's Allies: America and the 1916 Easter Rising (University College Dublin Press, 2016), 347-59.
- "The Easter Rising 100 Years On: How the Irish Revolution Fired up American Politics," The Conversation, May 6, 2016.
- H-Diplo Rountable on David Sim, A Union Forever: The Irish Question and U.S. Foreign Relations in the Victorian Age 17 (November 2015).
- “Matilda Tone in America: Exile, Gender, and Memory in the Making of Irish Republican Nationalism,” New Hibernia Review 14 (Spring 2010): 96-111.
- “Recent Directions in the History of Irish American Nationalism,” Journal of American Ethnic History 28 (Summer 2009): 82-89.
- “American Labor Union” and “Gilded Age,” in Eric Arnesen (ed.), Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working Class History (Routledge, 2007), 1:91-93, 2:521-27.
- “American Labour and the Irish Question, 1916-1923,” Saothar: Journal of the Irish Labour History Society 24 (1999): 59-66.
- "Irish Progressive League" and “Knights of Labor,” in Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, and Dan Georgakas (eds.), Encyclopedia of the American Left, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 1998), 387, 417-19.
- "'In Time of Peace, Prepare for War': Key Themes in the Social Thought of New York's Irish-American Nationalists, 1900-1916," in Ronald H. Bayor and Timothy J. Meagher (eds.), The New York Irish (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 321-34.
- The Making of Western Labor Radicalism: Denver's Organized Workers, 1878-1905 (University of Illinois Press, 1994).
- "After the Land League: The Persistence of Irish-American Labor Radicalism in Denver, 1897-1905," Journal of American Ethnic History 11 (Spring 1992): 3-26.
- Who Built America? Working People & the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture & Society, with Bruce Levine et al. (2 volumes, Pantheon, 1989-92).
- "Irish Land and American Workers: Class and Ethnicity in Denver, Colorado," in Dirk Hoerder (ed.), "Struggle a Hard Battle": Essays on Working-Class Immigrants (Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), 46-67.
- "The Producing Classes and the Saloon: Denver in the 1880s," Labor History 26 (Winter 1985): 29-52.