Faculty

Directors

Edward J. Blum, Ph.D. - Project Director

Email: [email protected]

Edward J. Blum holds the rank of Professor of United States History in the History Department at San Diego State University. He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky. His research, writing, and teaching involve politics, constitutionalism, war, society, and culture in the United States from the founding of the nation through the era of the Civil War. He has particular interests in how demography, statistics, numeracy, and quantitative information shaped the nation’s growth and development. Blum is also the author and co-author of several books on religion and race in United States history, including War is All Hell: The Nature of Evil and the Civil War (2021), Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898 (2005; reissued 2015), W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet (2007), and The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (2012). He is the winner of numerous awards including the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship, the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities, and the John T. Hubbell Prize for best article published in Civil War History in 2015.

 

Devanshi Unadkat, Ph.D.

Devanshi Unadkat is an Assistant Professor in the College of Education at San Diego State University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and her research and teaching focus on civic education, community-based learning, and digital pedagogies. Unadkat has extensive experience designing programs that support  participatory learning, critical historical thinking, reflective collaborations, and digital storytelling to support conversations and share learning. Prior to beginning teaching undergraduate and graduate students in different contexts, Unadkat worked with students from PreK-12 primarily supporting digital, critical, and civic literacy development. Unadkat also has experience leading student teacher training and supporting the development of programming that is broad-based, developmentally appropriate, and responsive to community needs.

Affiliated Faculty Fellows

Jean Pfaelzer, Ph.D.

Jean Pfaelzer is the author of California, A Slave State (2023), winner of the 2024 Heyday History of the Year Award, and Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans (2007), which was named one of the New York Times "100 Notable Books of the Year" and has been optioned for a four-part television series. She is also the author of four other books and dozens of articles on race, labor, gender, and immigration. Professor Pfaelzer was named Humanitarian of the Year by United Chinese Americans and has contributed to several major public history projects, including curatorial work for the Smithsonian’s I Want the Wide American Earth: An Asian Pacific American Story, and appearances in PBS documentaries such as 1882: The Chinese Exclusion Act and C-SPAN’s African American Slavery and the Underground Railroad in California. Currently Professor Emerita at the University of Delaware, she previously served as Executive Director of the National Labor Law Center and as Senior Legislative Analyst in the U.S. House of Representatives, focusing on immigration, labor, and women’s issues. Pfaelzer has held numerous prestigious fellowships, including a Senior Fulbright in American Studies at the University of Utrecht, a Senior Fellowship in American History at Cambridge University (2024, 2026), and a Senior Visiting Fellowship at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (2025). For the ARCH Project, she serves as a presenter and evaluator.

 

Claudio Saunt, Ph.D.

Claudio Saunt is the Richard B. Russell Professor of American History, Regents' Professor, and Co-Director of the Center for Virtual History at the University of Georgia. He is the author of four acclaimed books, including West of the Revolution (2014), Black, White, and Indian (2005), and A New Order of Things (1999). His most recent work, Unworthy Republic (2020), received the Bancroft Prize, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and the Ridenhour Book Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. A pioneer in digital history, Saunt has led several major online projects, including The Invasion of America and, with Elizabeth Fenn, Pox Americana. In 2018, he received an NEH Humanities Collections and Reference Resources grant to create an interactive time-lapse map of African, Native, and European populations in North America from 1500 to 1800. Supported by a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship, his current project, The Land Beneath Our Feet, digitally maps the Cherokee Nation in the 1830s, capturing the lives of the families displaced during Indian Removal. For the SDSU ARCH Project, he serves as a presenter and evaluator.

 

Steven B. Smith, Ph.D.

Steven B. Smith is the Alfred Cowles Professor of Political Science and Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, where he has taught since 1984. A scholar of the history of political philosophy, his work explores the tensions between ancient and modern thought, the intersection of religion and politics, and the theory and practice of representative government. He is the author of several influential books, including Hegel’s Critique of Liberalism, Spinoza’s Book of Life, Reading Leo Strauss, Political Philosophy, and Modernity and Its Discontents, and most recently co-edited The Cambridge Companion to Isaiah Berlin. Smith received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and has served in numerous roles at Yale, including Master of Branford College and Co-Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Representative Institutions. A recipient of the Lex Hixon Prize for Teaching Excellence, he serves the ARCH Project as a speaker and evaluator of resources. He is also a lifelong Yankees fan with hopes of joining the roster in the next life.