Jordan T. Camp, Associate Professor of American Studies
Jordan T. Camp is an Associate Professor of American Studies and Co-Director of the Social Justice Institute at Trinity College, and a Visiting Fellow in the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut. His research focuses on the relationships between race and class, expressive culture, political economy, the state, social theory, and the history of labor and freedom struggles.
Jordan is the author of Incarcerating the Crisis: Freedom Struggles and the Rise of the Neoliberal State (University of California Press, 2016); co-editor (with Christina Heatherton) of Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter (Verso, 2016); and co-editor (with Laura Pulido) of the late Clyde Woods’ Development Drowned and Reborn: The Blues and Bourbon Restorations in Post-Katrina New Orleans (University of Georgia Press, 2017). His work also appears in journals such as American Quarterly, Antipode, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Eurozine, Journal of Urban History, Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies, Ord & Bild, Race & Class, Rethinking Marxism, and Social Justice. He is the co-host and co-producer of the Conjuncture podcast and web series. He is currently working on a new book entitled, The Southern Question. |
 Scott Gac, Professor of American Studies and History
Scott teaches a variety of courses in American cultural history at Trinity College. He has written on the antislavery movement, protest music, the Civil War, and violence. His first book, Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Culture of Antebellum Reform (Yale Press, 2007), details the life and work of the Hutchinson Family Singers, the antislavery singing troupe and first commercially successful musicians of social protest in American history. Find out more about his recent talks and book news at his personal website, scottgac.com. |
 Amanda Guzman, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Amanda J. Guzmán is an anthropological archaeologist with a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in the field of museum anthropology with a focus on the history of collecting and exhibiting Puerto Rico at the intersection of issues of intercultural representation and national identity formation. Guzmán is the co-director of Trinity’s Center for Caribbean Studies.
With a record of fellowships awarded by the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of American History and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Guzmán has a demonstrated background handling and interpreting object and archival material in diverse collection-holding cultural institutions. She supports undergraduate anthropological training beyond the classroom through academic year research assistantships and regular participation in the Summer Research Program.
Amanda applies her collections experience as well as her commitment to working with and for multiple publics to her object-based inquiry teaching practice that privileges a more equitable, co-production of knowledge through accessible modelling of cultural work. As a former community learning faculty fellow and advisory board member, she actively collaborates with the Center for Hartford Engagement and Research through community learning courses. Guzmán has hosted class speaker series, focused on Puerto Rican and museum studies, to promote student interactions with broader networks of scholars and cultural workers.
Amanda serves as a board member on the Council for Museum Anthropology, the Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center and on the Board of Directors for the Pre-Columbian Society of New York. |
 Christina Heatherton, Elting Associate Professor of American Studies and Human Rights
Christina Heatherton is the author of Arise! Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution (University of California Press, 2022). The book will be translated into Spanish and republished by La Cigarra Press (Mexico City, Mexico) in Fall 2023. With Jordan T. Camp she previously edited Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter (Verso Books, 2016). Her work appears in volumes such as The Cambridge History of America in the World, edited by Kristin Lee Hoganson and Jay Sexton (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2022), Feminists Rethink the Neoliberal State: Inequality, Exclusion and Change, edited by Leela Fernandes (NYU Press, 2018), Futures of Black Radicalism, edited by Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin (Verso Books, 2017), and The Rising Tides of Color: Race, State Violence, and Radical Movements Across the Pacific, edited by Moon-Ho Jung (Univ. of Washington Press, 2014) as well as scholarly journals such as American Quarterly, Society and Space, Women’s Studies Quarterly, City, Social Justice, Interface. It also appears in popular venues such as Public Seminar, Politics/Letters, Zocalo, The Funambulist, Washington Spectator, and 032 Magazine.
Christina previously founded and co-directed several public facing initiatives, including: New Directions in American Studies (NDAS); the Oral History and Activism Project; and the Working Group on Racial Capitalism, a project of the Center for Study of Social Difference (CSSD), Columbia University. She is the editor of Downtown Blues: A Skid Row Reader (Freedom Now Books, 2011) and co-editor with Jordan T. Camp of Freedom Now! Struggles for the Human Right to Housing in LA and Beyond (Freedom Now Books, 2012). She is co-host and co-producer of the podcast/ web series Conjuncture. She currently co-directs the Trinity Social Justice Institute. |
 Karen Li Miller, Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies
Karen Li Miller teaches American culture and literature courses. Her interests include nineteenth-century, multi-ethnic, women’s, children’s, and material culture studies. Her dissertation, Locating Reproduction: Representations of the Chinese in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, explored the theme of reproduction in a range of perspectives, from the politics of individual women’s bodies to American immigration policies to Sino-American relations. The project examined a variety of texts and materials, including canonical writings, such as Melville and Twain, historical women’s publications, children’s missionary periodicals, chinoiserie, photographs, and toys. This interdisciplinary and multi-layered research approach informs her teaching philosophy. Through interactive assignments and discussions, she works to extend students’ sense of connection and authority with our texts as well as in their multiple communities, from local to global. |
 Juliet Nebolon, Assistant Professor of American Studies
Juliet received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. Her research and teaching bring a transnational perspective to the study of race, indigeneity, and gender in the United States, with a particular focus on U.S. war and empire in Asia and the Pacific Islands. Nebolon’s book manuscript, Settler Militarism: World War II in Hawai‘i and the Making of U.S. Empire (under contract, Duke UP), focuses on the martial law period in Hawai‘i during the Pacific War. This interdisciplinary project explores the overlapping regimes of settler colonialism and militarization in the domains of public health, domestic science, education, land acquisition, and internment. Her article in American Quarterly, “‘Life Given Straight from the Heart’: Settler Militarism, Biopolitics, and Public Health in Hawai‘i during World War II,” was awarded the American Studies Association’s 2018 Constance M. Rourke Prize. She recently published a second article, “Settler-Military Camps: Internment and Prisoner of War Camps across the Pacific Islands during World War II,” in the Journal of Asian American Studies. |
