Department of History

New Faces

Meet the Department of History's newest faculty members.

Peng Hai

I am a historian and cultural studies scholar specializing in three emergent fields--the modern history of the Chinese ethnic borderlands, Islam in China, and the cultural critique of ethnic domination in post-colonial states. I received my Ph.D. from Harvard in Spring 2023. Since coming to Pitt, I have taught a graduate seminar on China's Inner Asian regions since the 1800s. My current research pivots to a global lens in understanding the curtailed self-expression of certain ethnically marked bodies in increasingly majoritarian post-colonial national states. At the same time, I also strive to understand the structural enablers that once facilitated the globe-trotting experience of some members of those minorities, who once were the key agents in the embodied practice of connecting the globe as they sought religious affinity, modernist reform, and identity renewal.

Click here to read more about Professor Hai. 

John Boonstra

I'm a historian of gender and empire in the modern Mediterranean, with particular interests in French colonial interventions in the Middle East and North Africa before, during, and after the First World War. Before coming to Pitt, I was a lecturer on HIstory and Literature at Harvard University, and I held a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellowship at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy from 2018-2019. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2018, and my BA from Swarthmore College. 

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Eladio Bobadilla

I'm a historian of U.S. social movements with a particular interest in ordinary, working-class people who have worked to resist their conditions and their oppressors. More generally, I am interested in how ordinary people have created and lived out radical identities and ideologies spanning the political spectrum and in how both liberatory and reactionary politics have surfaced, reinforced, and recreated one another in U.S. History. I care deeply about teaching, pedagogy, and mentoring, and as a publicly engaged scholar, I regularly write for public audiences. Before coming to Pitt, I taught at the University of Kentucky, where I held my first academic position after receiving my Ph.D. from Duke University.

Click here to read more about Professor Bobadilla.

 

Alissa Klots

I grew up in Perm, Russia – an industrial city in the Urals. I received my B.A. from Perm State University and then continued my graduate studies there, earning a candidate of science degree – a Russian equivalent of a Ph.D. I enjoyed being a student so much, I decided to write another dissertation – this time in the United States. After receiving a Ph.D. in history from Rutgers University, I taught at the European University at Saint Petersburg – a research university that offers only graduate education. Before coming to Pitt, I held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Zvi Yaetz School of Historical Studies at Tel Aviv University.  Read more>>