Faculty

Faculty

Principal Faculty

William Deverell, PhD, Professor of History
University of Southern California and Director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West
Deverell has authored or co-authored more than two dozen books, chapters, and articles on California and the West addressing topics in political, social, ethnic, and environmental history. Currently at work on a book exploring the history of the post-Civil War American West, he recently published the Blackwell Companion to California with David Igler and the Blackwell Companion to Los Angeles with Greg Hise. He is also co-editing the Encyclopedia of California for UC Press. He is director of The Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, a center for scholarly investigation of the history and culture of California and the American West. ICW draws on the resources of the University of Southern California and the Huntington Library to build an innovative collaboration between a research university and a research library.

Peter Westwick, PhD, Assistant Professor (Research) of History
University of Southern California & Director of the Aerospace History Project, Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West
Westwick, a historian of science, was a Postdoctoral Fellow and later a Senior Research Fellow in Humanities at Caltech. He has authored or co-authored 18 books, chapters, and articles related to the aerospace industry and the history of American science and technology in the Cold War, including Into the Black: JPL and the American Space Program, 1974-2004, which won book prizes from both the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the American Astronautical Society. Most recently, he edited Blue Sky Metropolis: The Aerospace Century in Southern California. Westwick is also director of the Aerospace History Project, part of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West and a wide-ranging archival, scholarly, and public outreach effort aimed at the preservation and interpretation of myriad materials and memories of the aerospace history of Southern California.

Faculty

Ali Igmen, PhD, Associate Professor of History
California State University, Long Beach
Ali İğmen teaches Central Asian History, and is Director of the Oral Historogram at CSULB. His book Speaking Soviet with an Accent: Culture and Power in Kyrgyzstan was published by the “Central Asia in Context Series” of the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2012, and was a finalist for the Best Book Prize of the Central Eurasian Studies Society. He works on the history of Soviet culture and gender politics in Central Eurasia, and is currently writing his second book on Kyrgyz actresses whose lives and work reflect Soviet gender and cultural policies of the 1950s to 1980s. He taught at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Kyrgyz National University in Bishkek, Osh State University in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, and Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey.

Andy Jenks, PhD, Associate Professor of history
California State Univesity, Long Beach
Jenks specializes in the history of modern Europe, Russia, environment, and science. His most recent book, The Cosmonaut Who Couldn’t Stop Smiling: The Life and Legend of Yuri Gagarin, explores modern Soviet and Russian history through the life and times of the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. Supported with grants from NASA and the American Historical Association, his current research examines the period of the late Cold War and détente through the history of joint manned space flight missions, beginning with the Apollo-­‐Soyuz space venture of 1975.

Eileen Luhr, PhD, Assistant Professor of History
California State University, Long Beach
Luhr’s research interests include cultural and religious history, politics, and modern United States history. Her Witnessing Suburbia explores the intersection of conservatism, religion, and suburbanization by demonstrating the ways in which conservative religious beliefs helped reshape the political and cultural landscape of the late twentieth century. Luhr is currently at work on a project that examines evangelical Christian responses to domestic and global unrest during the Cold War. Luhr also serves as the coordinator for the Social Science Credential Program and teach History 401, Social Science for Teachers.

Arthur Verge, PhD, Professor of History
El Camino College, Torrance
Arthur Verge received a B.A. in history from the University of California at Santa Barbara and an M.A., M.P.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Southern California. He worked closely with noted historian Andrew Rolle on the 7th edition of California: A History. Born in Santa Monica, California, Arthur Verge’s family has roots back to the State’s mission period. He specializes in California and Latin American history. Among his published works is Paradise Transformed: Los Angeles During the Second World War. He has written two books on the lifeguard service. His article on lifeguard/surfing legend George Freeth (which appeared in the Journal of California History) was the basis for the 2009 award winning film “Waveriders,” voted Best Feature Documentary at the National Irish Film and Television Awards. Verge was the recipient of El Camino College’s Distinguished Faculty Award in 2004.

D.J. Waldie, Author and Memoirist
Waldie served as Lakewood’s Public Information Officer between 1981 and 2010 and retired as Deputy City Manager of Lakewood in 2010. He is the author of the award-winning Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir as well as Real City: Downtown Los Angeles Inside/Out, Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles, and Close to Home: An American Album. Holy Land received the California Book Award for nonfiction in 1996. In 2004, Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles was named one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Waldie is a contributing writer at Los Angeles Magazine. His book reviews and commentary have appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. He has lectured on the social history of Southern California at over a half-dozen campuses around the country.