New History Faculty at UST

Welcome to our new faculty members, Dr. Patti Kameya and Dr. Hasan Karatas.

Dr. Kameya comes to us from Kent State, where she has been teaching a variety of courses in Japanese history and East Asian civilizations, including Samurai Thought and Gender and Pre-Twentieth-Century East Asia. She especially enjoys using literature and art as media for teaching history. Her current research focuses on ethics, economics and aesthetics among eighteenth-century Japanese eccentrics as described in Kinsei kijinden (Eccentrics of our Times). Other research areas include Japanese intellectual history and the influences of cultural spaces on the formation of national identity.

Dr. Karatas recently completed his doctoral degree in Near Eastern Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. His research areas include urban historiography in the Late Ottoman and Early Republican Turkey, urban  history in the early modern Islamic world, and the social history of Islamic Mysticism.  In addition, Dr. Karatas has been doing some part-time teaching at New York and Sabanci Universities including courses in Ottoman Turkish language, the history of Modern Turkey, and religion and politics in the early modern Middle East.

Dr. Anne Klejment                                                             

recently learned that her article on Thea Bowman, FSPA, was published in Great Lives from History: African Americans by Salem Press. Bowman was an African-american Franciscan nun noted for her voice, her prophetic message and her empowerment of African-American Catholics. Her community is examining evidence of her sanctity as the sisters consider the possiblility of presenting her cause for canonization to the Vatican. Dr. Klejment and Father David Smith, former Theology Department faculty member and founder of the Justice and Peace Studies program at St. Thomas, were appointed to the advisory committee of the Friends of the Dorothy Day Guild. The Friends Guild supports the canonization of
Dorothy Day through prayer and in other ways.  

Dr. Klejment is also the author of "Dorothy Day and Cesar Chavez: American Catholic LIves in Nonviolence," published in the summer 2011 issue of US Catholic Historian 29 (3):67-90. The article discusses the shared social and religious characteristics that resulted in their dedication to working for social justice.     

Dr. Thomas Mega
In the recent past, Dr. Mega has published a review of Dreisbach, Hall, and Morrison, eds., The Founders on God and Government, presented a paper, “Republicanism, Class, and Independence” at the Northern Great Plains History Conference, and chaired a session entitled “Survival Abroad: How to Live and Succeed in a Foreign Nation, also at the Northern Great Plains History Conference.

Dr. Ivancica Schrunk

is the co-author of a book chapter, "The Brioni Archipelago: Functional Identity of a Historical Landscape," published in the book, Landscapes, Identities and Development, ed. Z. Roca, P. Claval and J. Agnew (Ashgate,2011). She also is the author of one and co-author of another entry in the Encyclopedia of Ancient History, ed Bagnall et al. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). Her article, "Spiritual Economy and Spiritual Craft: Monastic Pottery Production and Trade," is published online on the website of Minnesota in Egypt, ed. S. McNally.

Dr. Scott Wright

Dr. Wright has been writing essays for several Salem Press reference works in the Great Lives From History series. The subjects of his most recent essays have been: boxer Max Baer and Rabbi Harold Kushner (Jewish Americans); explorer James Beckwourth, boxer Floyd Patterson and black abolitionist David Walker (African Americans); boxer Art Aragon and politicians Dennis Chavez and Edward Roybal (Latinos). He is currently completing an essay on Japanese American rights activist Fred Korematsu for the series on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.