Associate Professor of History
Degrees
- Ph.D., the University of California, Irvine (2009): Dissertation, “‘Beneath the Muslim Peel’: racial science, French native policy, and the question of nationalism in colonial Morocco, 1900-1939”
- M.A., the University of California, Irvine (2005)
- B.A., the University of Idaho (2002)
Research Interests
My research interests span a wide range of social, political and environmental topics within the field of French colonial history. My research agenda focuses on colonial law, ethnography, anti-colonial revolt and the built environment of rural Morocco. I am primarily interested in ethno-spatial-legal boundaries in North Africa and the relationship between rural modernization and French ontologies of environmental thrift and resource stewardship, particularly issues relating to Moroccan land and water rights. I am currently working on a book manuscript that brings together my interests in rural modernization, the environment and anti-colonial revolt in Morocco. The idea that the environment was at issue between colonial enthusiasts and anti-colonial activists has only recently been given serious consideration and I hope that my book will contribute to an emerging sub-field of French colonial/North African scholarship.
Courses
- [HIS316] France and the Islamic World
- [HIS324] Empire and the Environment
- [WT15] War and Memory in French-Algerian Film
- [HIS234] The Twentieth-Century World
- [HIS218] Societies and Cultures of the Modern Middle East
- [HIS206] Making History: The French Revolution
- [HIS202] The European Experience
Selected Publications
- “Deserts, Capital and ‘Civilisation’: the politics of environmental naming in eastern Morocco, 1925-1939, Global Environments special issue: deserts 12 (2019): 134-153.
- “Urban Revolt and the Urban Environment: Meknès, 1937” in Laura Feliu Martinez (ed.), Revuelta social en Marruecos (Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma, 2018).
- “Disaster Ecologies: Land, Peoples and the Colonial Modern in the Gharb, Morocco, 1911-1936” Journal of Social and Economic History of the Orient 59 (3, 2016): 333-365.
- “‘Not a drop for the settlers’: reimagining popular protest and anti-colonial nationalism in the Moroccan Protectorate,” Journal of North African Studies 20, 2 (2015): 225-246.
- “Racial Myth, Colonial Policy, and the Invention of Customary Law in Morocco, 1912-1930,” Journal of North African Studies 16, 3 (2011): 361-380.
Selected Review Articles
- Edmund Burke III, “The Enthographic State: France and the Invention of Moroccan Islam” H-France Review (forthcoming, 2017).
- Aref Abu-Rabia, “Indigenous Medicine among the Bedouin in the Middle East,” Social History of Medicine DOI 10.1093/shm/hkw138.
- Ali Yahia Abdennour, “La Crise Berbère de 1949,” Journal of North African Studies DOI 10.1080/13629387.2017.1299982.
- Frederick Cooper, “Citizenship between Empire and Nation: remaking France and French Africa, 1945-1960,” Reviews and Critical Commentary (CritCom), Council of European Studies, Columbia University, Spring, 2015 https://councilforeuropeanstudies.org/critcom/
- Ellen Amster, “Medicine and the Saints: science, Islam and the colonial encounter in Morocco, 1877-1956,” Social History of Medicine 27, 3 (2014): 604-606.
- James Barr, “A Line in the Sand: The Anglo-French Struggle for the Middle East, 1914-1948,” H-France Review 12, 111 (August 2012).
- Rami Ginat, “Syria and the Doctrine of Arab Neutralism: from independence to dependence,” Insight Turkey 13, 3 (2011): 226.