Faculty and Staff
Full-Time Faculty

Emily Berquist-Soule, Ph.D.
Professor
Emily Berquist Soule, Ph.D. is a Professor of History who specializes in the Spanish Atlantic world, the early modern Spanish empire, and colonial Latin America. She is at work on her second monograph, The Atlantic Slave Trade and the Rise and Fall of the Spanish Empire (under contract, Yale University Press), a 500-year history of the slave trade to the Spanish Atlantic empire, from Castile's first overseas ventures to the Canary Islands in the mid-fourteenth century to the final abolition of slavery in Cuba (1886). Her first book, The Bishop's Utopia: Envisioning Improvement in Colonial Peru was published by the University of Pennsylvania in 2014. At Long Beach, Dr. Berquist teaches upper-division courses that focus on slavery, religion, and visual culture in colonial Latin America and the early modern Spanish empire. Dr. Berquist is also editor of the journal Atlantic Studies: Global Currents, where she handles submissions on the Global South.
Courses HIST 362: Colonial Latin America; HIST 460/560: Slavery in Latin America; HIST 465: Seeing Latin America: Visual Culture and History in the Latin American World; HIST 499: 466: Gods, Saints, and Sinners: The Culture of Religion in Colonial Latin America; 499: Senior Seminar (How to Stage a Revolution-Latin American History)
Location: FO2-211
Email: emily.berquist@csulb.edu

Donna Binkiewicz, Ph.D.
Full-Time Lecturer
Location: FO2-107
Donna Binkiewicz began her academic career with an A.S. degree from Maui College, then earned her B.A. in History at UC Berkeley (Go Bears!). She completed her M.A. and Ph.D. in United States History at UCLA (Go Bruins!). Her research is focused on recent American politics and culture as well as immigration history. In 2021, she published her second book, Between the Sea and Sky: My Portuguese American Family in Upcountry Maui, 1881-1941, which explores (through family history) the immigration of Portuguese workers to Hawaii and their endeavors to honor their cultural traditions while also building new lives in rural Hawaii. Her first monograph, Federalizing the Muse: United States Arts Policy and the National Endowment for the Arts, 1965-1980, was published in 2004. It analyzes the relationship of American Cold War politics and American visual arts in the founding and administration of the NEA’s visual arts program, including its emphasis on modernist art. Dr. Binkiewicz also serves on the Editorial Board of The History Teacher journal. She teaches a variety of American history courses.
Courses HIST 173: Recent United States; HIST 172: Early United States; HIST 301: Methodology of History; HIST 378: US 1877-1920; HIST 379: US 1920-1945; HIST 380A: US 1945-1968; HIST 451: US in the World; HIST 475: US Immigration and Ethnicity; HIST 473: California History; HIST: 499: US Politics and Policy
Email: Donna.Binkiewicz@csulb.edu

Jeffrey Blutinger, Ph.D.
Professor
Director, Jewish Studies
Jeffrey C. Blutinger received his B.A. in English Literature (1984), his J.D. (1988), and his M.A. and Ph.D. in History (1997, 2003) all from UCLA (go Bruins!). His research interests include modern Jewish history, historiography, Holocaust, memory and memorialization, and contemporary antisemitic extremism. He has taught in the History Department since Fall 2004, where he has also served first as Assistant Director, and then as Director of the CSULB Jewish Studies Program. He also in the inaugural holder of the Barbara and Ray Alpert Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies.
He currently has a book manuscript, Heinrich Graetz: Writing History With Tears and Fire, undergoing peer review. It is an intellectual biography of one of the most influential Jewish historians of the nineteenth century. Other recent scholarship includes “A New Protocols: Kevin MacDonald’s Reconceptualization of Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory,” Antisemitism Studies. 5:1 (2021); “‘I Know One Day a Miracle Will Happen’: Bruno Balz and the Position of the Gay Artist in Nazi Germany,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 30:3 (2021); and “Classroom Revolutionaries: A Case Study of Radical Left-Wing Antisemitism in the California State University System,” (undergoing peer review). He also regularly leads a short-term study-abroad course on the Holocaust.
Courses HEBW 100/HIST 140: Jewish Humor; HIST 141: Introduction to Jewish Civilization; HIST 301: Methodology of History; HIST 304: History of the Holocaust; HIST 344: Modern European Jewish History; HIST 345: Comparative Genocide; HIST 393: Jews of the Modern Middle East; HIST 420: Modern Israel; HIST 499: Senior Seminar.
Location: FO2-210
Email: Jeffrey.Blutinger@csulb.edu
Isacar Bolaños, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Ph.D. The Ohio State University, 2019
Location: FO2-111
Email: isacar.bolanos@csulb.edu
Daniele Bolelli
Lecturer
B.A., University of California, Los Angeles (Anthropology)
B.A., University of California, Los Angeles (American Indian Studies)
B.A., California State University, Long Beach (History)
Daniele Bolelli's research interests include American Indian history, the history of world religions (with a particular focus on Taoism and Buddhism, and on the interaction between monotheistic and polytheistic religions), U.S. History (in particular, American popular culture), the history of ancient Rome, and the global history of martial arts.” Professor Bolelli hosts the popular podcast History on Fire.
Location: FO3-306
Email: bodhi1974@yahoo.com

Kate L. Flach, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Kate L. Flach received her B.A. in Education and M.A. in History from the University of Akron, and a Ph.D. in History from UC San Diego. Her research interests include modern US history, media history, race, gender, social movements, and the history of education. She is currently completing her book manuscript tentatively titled, Producing America: Race, Media, and National Identity, which examines how Americans have envisioned television as a site for civic engagement and liberal politics in the 1960s-1970s. Her article “‘America’s Nervous Breakdown’: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Popular Psychology, and the Demise of the Housewife in the 1970s,” explores the role television played in upending the cold war consensus that contributed to the anxieties of everyday people and rise of popular psychology. Her bylines have appeared in The Washington Post and are available on Bunk History.
Courses HIST 173: Recent US History; HIST 301: Methodology of History; HIST 499: Senior Seminar (The Politics of Education); HIST 485B: History of Women in the US since 1850; HIST 476: The History of Social Activism; HIST/AMST 453: Television Borders: Cultural Crossings in the US Southwest and South
Location: FO2-105-A
Email: kate.flach@csulb.edu
Gail Hamilton
Lecturer
Advisor, History/Social Science Single Subject Credential Program
Location: FO2-117
Email: gail.hamilton@csulb.edu

Ali F. Iğmen, Ph.D.
Professor
Director, Oral History Program
Director, Research in the Humanities, College of Liberal Arts
Location: FO2-116
Email: ali.igmen@csulb.edu

Rajbir Singh Judge, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Rajbir Singh Judge is Assistant Professor of History and Associate Member of Asian and Asian American Studies at California State University, Long Beach. He specializes in the intellectual and cultural history of South Asia with a particular emphasis on Punjab and the Sikh tradition. His first book, Prophetic Maharaja: Loss, Sovereignty, and the Sikh Tradition in Colonial South Asia was published by Columbia University Press in 2024. He is currently working on his second book, A Critique of Contextual Reason, for which he was awarded membership at the Institute for Advanced Study in the 2024-2025 Academic Year. His publications have appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Modern Asian Studies, Theory & Event, Cultural Critique, the Journal of the History of Sexuality, History & Theory, among others.
More about Dr. Rajbir Singh Judge
Courses HIST 302: Theory & History; HIST 385: Histories of South Asia; HIST 396: Contemporary World History; HIST 436: Challenging Empire: The Ordeals of Decolonization; HIST 438: History of Marxist Thought; HIST 439: Global Freud: Psychoanalysis and the Clinic in World History; HIST 450/550: Foucault and His Critics; HIST 499: Senior Seminar (Commodities); HIST 510E: Literature of World History; HIST 641: Seminar in World History.
Location: FO2-113
Email: rajbir.judge@csulb.edu

Mik Larsen, Ph.D.
Lecturer
Dr. Mik Larsen is a scholar of the Roman Empire and the ancient Mediterranean who has taught at CSULB since 2018, most recently as the Interim David Hood Chair in Ancient History, after graduating with his PhD from UCLA in 2015. His areas of research and study include ancient rhetoric, social mobility, religion, epigraphy, and ancient historiography. He teaches courses on Greece and Rome in antiquity as well as on theory in history and special topics in the social and cultural history of the ancient world; he also heads the Ancient/Medieval field for the MA program here at CSULB. He’s currently working on a manuscript about the rhetoric of poverty in the late Roman Republic and early Empire.
Courses HIST 313: Ancient Greece; HIST/CLSC 310: The Greek World; HIST 314: Ancient Rome; HIST/CSLC 312: The Roman World; HIST 315: Egypt, Sumer, and the Ancient Near East; HIST 413: Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean; HIST 302: History and Theory; HIST 499: Senior Seminar; HIST 510: Introduction to Ancient Historiography; HIST 611: Graduate Research Seminar
Location: FO2-108
Email: mik.larsen@csulb.edu

Eileen Luhr, Ph.D.
Professor
Originally from Buffalo, Dr. Luhr has taught US cultural history and history pedagogy at CSULB since 2006. She also coordinates the History-Social Science credential program and serves as president of the Society for History Education, which publishes The History Teacher.
Dr. Luhr’s research illuminates the intersection of religion, politics, and consumer culture. Her first book, Witnessing Suburbia: Conservatives and Christian Youth Culture (UC Press, 2009), examines changes to evangelicalism amid Sunbelt migrations, the rise of conservatism, and the expansion of consumer culture. Her second book, Golden States: How California Religion Went from Cautionary Tale to Global Brand (UC Press, 2024), provides an alternative history of religion and spirituality through a re-reading of Southern California’s cultural landscape. Golden States argues that commitments to the emotional and therapeutic needs and desires of individual believers came at the expense of broader efforts and obligations to achieve collective well-being. Even as alternative beliefs became part of the region’s lifestyle brand, communities had to navigate tensions between privileging individual choice and pursuing a social good.
Courses History 302: History & Theory; History 501: Historical Thinking & the Discipline of History; History 605: Research in History Teaching, Learning, and Cognition
Location: FO2-122
Email: eileen.luhr@csulb.edu
Brett Mizelle, Ph.D.
Professor
Chair, American Studies
Location: FO2-226
Email: brett.mizelle@csulb.edu

Ulices Piña, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Faculty Coordinator for Credit for Prior Learning
Dr. Piña is a native of Long Beach and a product of the California public school system with deep familial roots in the Mexican state of Jalisco. Piña attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School and received his B.A. in History & Spanish and M.A. in History from UC Riverside, and Ph.D. in History from UC San Diego. His teaching and research interests include Mexico, Modern Latin America, revolutions, social movements, democracy studies, political culture, and social activism. Currently, he is completing the final revisions for his book, Rebellious Citizens: Social Upheaval and Democracy in Revolutionary Mexico. His publications have appeared in the Journal of Social History, Letras Históricas, Latin American Research Review, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin America. His bylines have appeared in The Washington Post and in La Nación (Argentina). Dr. Piña’s research has been supported by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, the Fulbright Commission in Mexico (COMEXUS), the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC-MEXUS), and the National Institute of Historical Studies on the Revolutions of Mexico (INEHRM), among others. He is also a long-time supporter of the Los Angeles Galaxy.
Courses HIST 301: Methodology of History; HIST 364: Latin American Nations; HIST 457: Cycles of Violence in Mexico; HIST 462: Mexico; HIST 476: The History of Social Activism; HIST 499: Senior Seminar (Revolutionary and Social Movements in Latin America); HIST 502: Historical Research and Writing.
Location: FO2-112
Email: ulices.pina@csulb.edu

Charles L. Ponce de Leon, Ph.D.
Professor
Charles Ponce de Leon, Professor of History and American Studies, is a specialist in US cultural and intellectual history. He received his BA from UC Santa Barbara and a PhD from Rutgers University, and his fields of expertise include mass media and the commercial culture industries, American intellectual life, and modern U.S. political culture. His research has focused on the history of American journalism and the mass media, particularly the connections between political culture and the commercial culture industries. He has written four books: Self-Exposure (University of North Carolina Press, 2001), a monograph examining the origins and cultural significance of human-interest journalism about celebrities in the early 1900s; Fortunate Son (Hill and Wang, 2006), a biography of Elvis Presley; That’s the Way It Is (University of Chicago Press, 2015), a history of television news in the US; and, most recently, All the News That Fits: Rolling Stone Magazine and the Rise of Hip Capitalism (University of North Carolina Press, 2025). He has previously taught at Princeton University and Purchase College (SUNY) and has been at Long Beach State since 2008.
Courses HIST 173: Recent United States History; HIST 379: The Twenties, Depression, and World War II; HIST 380A: The United States in the Liberal Era, 1945-1968; HIST 380B: The United States, 1968-2008; HIST 477B: American Cultural History since 1877; HIST 499: Senior Seminar (Topics in US Cultural and Intellectual History)
Location: FO2-214
David Shafer, Ph.D.
Professor
Chair, Department of History
Location: FO2-102
Email: david.shafer@csulb.edu

David Sheridan, Ph.D.
Lecturer
David Sheridan has taught in the History Department at California State University, Long Beach since the Fall of 2006. His historical interests and training center around modern European history, with a focus on gender, music, culture, and social history. Dr. Sheridan’s research on the relationship between musical work, gender, and wartime identity during the Second World War in Britain formed the crux of his doctoral project titled “‘Give us More Music’: Women, Work, and Musical Culture in Wartime Britain, 1939-1945.” His chapter “‘Singing While England is Burning’: Women as Working ‘Music Travellers’ in Wartime Britain,” in Women and Work Culture in Britain, 1850-1950, eds. Krista Cowman and Louise Jackson, Ashgate, 2006, is related to his doctoral research. Additionally, he serves as CSULB’s Coordinator of Program Review and Assessment in Academic Affairs, through the Office of Program and Institutional Effectiveness (OPIE). His outside interests include the filmography of Terrence Malick and Krzysztof Kieślowski, Gulf Coast seafood, college football, and the music of Howard Hanson and Herbert Howells.In addition to his work on campus, he performs as a professional musician, both as a choral singer and conductor, within the Southern California choral music scene.
Courses HIST 330: Early Modern Europe; HIST 331: History of Modern Europe; HIST 357: Recent Britain; HIST 303: Rebels and Renegades; HIST 302: Theory and History; HIST 499: Senior Seminar
Location: FO2-208
Email: david.sheridan@csulb.edu

Hugh Wilford, Ph.D.
Professor
Hugh Wilford joined the History Department in 2006, having taught previously at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. Trained in the U.K. as a U.S. intellectual historian, he has published widely on such topics as the New York Intellectuals, Americanization and anti-Americanism, and the history of the CIA. Dr. Wilford is the author or co-editor of six books, including The CIA: An Imperial History (New York: Basic Books, 2024); America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East (New York: Basic Books, 2013); and The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). He also wrote and presented the Great Courses lecture series on the history of the CIA, The Agency (2019). He has received awards and fellowships from, among other grantors, the U.K. government, the Fulbright Commission, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Courses HIST 173: Recent United States History; HIST 301: Methodology of History; HIST 451: The United States in the World; HIST 499: Senior Seminar; HIST 673: Seminar in U.S. History.
Location: FO2-216
Email: hugh.wilford@csulb.edu
Part-Time Faculty
Gregory Beirich, Ph.D.
Lecturer
Dr. Beirich holds a Ph.D. in Medieval Religious and Intellectual History from Fordham University. His research interests involve the development and application of medieval intellectual concepts of political, religious, and social outsiders. In particular, Dr. Beirich finds the challenges that medieval heresy presented to social and political authority fascinating, and he seeks to situate these challenges within the overall context of medieval society and culture while at the same time relating them to more contemporary developments. In other words, he explores what the dissenters of the past can tell us about the dissenters of our own times. Dr. Beirich has taught a variety of courses in the History Department at California State University, Long Beach, including Critical Thinking, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Western and World History, the Middle Ages, Research Methods, Historiography, The Italian Renaissance, The Reformation, the Development of Modern Europe, Modern Europe, and Medieval Heresy and Witchcraft. He also has a keen interest in collegiate and professional football that stems from his days as an undergraduate at the University of Texas, Austin.
Location: FO2-118
Email: gregory.beirich@csulb.edu

Julie Haltom
Lecturer
Julie Haltom is a Lecturer who specializes in the American West, frontier expansion, homesteading, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century California. Her first article, “Reinventing the Frontier: Jackrabbit Homesteading as New Pioneers,” is currently under review with Southern California Quarterly. It examines small tract homesteading in the Mojave Desert as a process of frontier reinvention that allowed postwar Southern Californians to recapture the cultural memories of the past. A précis of her graduate research, titled “Jackrabbiting Away from Urban Spaces,” was featured in The Metropole, a blog published by the Urban History Association. Professor Haltom teaches U.S. History surveys and a lower division critical thinking course. She also teaches an upper division course on California History. Currently, she serves as the faculty coordinator for the History Writing Tutors.
Courses: HIST 101: Facts, Evidence and Explanation; HIST 172: Early U.S. History; HIST 173: Recent U.S. History; HIST 473: California History
Location: FO2-107
Email: Julie.Haltom@csulb.edu

Reza Yeganehshakib, Ph.D.
Lecturer
Dr. Reza Yeganehshakib holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Irvine. He also earned an M.S. in Environmental Studies from California State University, Fullerton, and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering. He has written extensively on political risk, economic history, and energy policy, with his work appearing in various international publications. He has also contributed to global media discussions, offering insights on geopolitics, sustainability, and economic development.
He has published two monographs: Baku-Tbilisi-Kars Railroad: Creating a New Era through the Revival of the Silk Roads (2022) [ISBN: 9789645263353], which analyzes the geopolitical and economic significance of modern infrastructure in the context of historical trade routes, and Iran-India Energy Cooperation: Drawing a Bigger Image of the Two Nations’ Relations (2022) [ISBN: 9789645263469], which examines the evolving energy partnership between Iran and India as a foundation for broader bilateral cooperation across multiple sectors.
In addition to his academic career, he is providing consulting services to the private sector in the fields of energy and environmental policy. His interdisciplinary research spans public and environmental history, energy politics, economic development, and global sustainability. To stay updated on his latest research, publications, and insights, follow him on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.
Courses HIST 111: World History, Origins to 1500; HIST 173: Recent United States History; HIST 132: Modern Western Civilization; HIST 172: Early United States History
Location: FO2-110
Email: Reza.Yeganehshakib@csulb.edu
Staff
Phyllis Simon
Administrative Support Coordinator II
Location: FO2-106
Email: phyllis.simon@csulb.edu
Phone: (562) 985-4432