New Director Named at Kennesaw State University's MA of American Studies Program Dr. Rebecca Hill, Associate Professor of History and American Studies joins faculty

KENNESAW, GA, September 10, 2010 (Press-News.org) Dr. Rebecca Hill, Associate Professor of History and American Studies joins faculty

Dr. Rich Vengroff, Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Kennesaw State University, recently named Dr. Rebecca Hill as Director of the Masters of Arts in American Studies Program.

According to Vengroff, "Dr. Hill brings the experience, scholarly credentials and leadership skills that can help bring the American Studies program to a position of national prominence in the field. We expect that the program will attract outstanding students from Georgia, across the U.S. and beyond under her leadership."

Rebecca Hill has a PhD in American Studies from the University of Minnesota with a Graduate minor in Feminist Studies. Her B.A. was in history from Wesleyan University (CT). Her work on the history and culture of the American left has been published in The New Left Review, Radical Teacher, and the Journal of the History of American Communism. Her book, Men, Mobs and Law: Defense Campaigns and U.S. Radical History was published by Duke University Press. (2008).

Hill joins the faculty of Kennesaw State after eight years at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, a part of the City University of New York, , where she was also the chair of the campus chapter of the faculty union from 2008-2010. She has eighteen years of teaching experience, and has taught courses in American Studies, Sociology, History, African-American Studies, Women's Studies, and Labor Studies at the University of Minnesota, NYU, City College, Rutgers and the New School Graduate Faculty.

She is currently finishing work on an article entitled "The Common Enemy is the Boss and the Inmate" about the history of New York City police and New York State prison guards during the economic downturn and political shift to the right of the 1970s, and is beginning a new project on the NAACP's death penalty defense campaigns of 1919-1941 with the working title "Under the Shadow of Scottsboro." She will be giving a lecture on "The Radical Politics of John Brown" as part of the event "John Brown: Martyr or Madman" sponsored by the Center for the Study of the Civil War and American Studies on October 11.

"I'm very happy to join the faculty at Kennesaw State," said Dr. Rebecca Hill. "I am already enjoying working with our excellent group of master's students. I am glad to be working in a program that is so well designed to bridge the gap between scholars and the wider community."