Dr. Stephanie Amerian

Dr. Stephanie Amerian

Professor
overlay-img

Dr. Stephanie Amerian teaches U.S. History. She received a BA in History from UC-Berkeley and an MA and PhD in History from UCLA. Her areas of expertise include late 19th to mid-20th century Urban History, Gender and Sexuality, Consumerism, and the Cold War. She is currently the chair of the Program Review joint committee of the Academic Senate. She has assisted department colleagues in the History Oral History Internship Program and Peer Mentoring Program, and led the Quinn Internship, partnering with the UCLA Bunch Center for African American Studies to have SMC students digitize the manuscript archive of Dr. Alfred Quinn, a long-time SMC instructor and member of the Board of Trustees. She is currently developing a new course on LGBTQ US History.

Course Offerings

  • History 10: Ethnicity in American Culture
  • History 11: United States Through Reconstruction
  • History 12: United States Since Reconstruction
  • History 52: Women in American Culture

 

Publications

Journal Articles

  • “The Fashion Gap: the Cold War Politics of American and Soviet Fashion, 1945-1959,” Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 8.1, Special Issue: The Cold War and Marketing (January 2016): 65-82.
  • “Fashioning and Selling the American Look: Dorothy Shaver and Modern Art,” Investigaciones de Historia Económica - Economic History Research 12 (2016): 100-108. 
  • “‘Buying European’: the Marshall Plan and American Department Stores,” Diplomatic History 39.1 (January 2015): 45-69.
  • Silk, Y., Silver, D., Amerian, S., Nishimura, C., Boscardin, C.K. (2009). Using Classroom Artifacts to Measure the Efficacy of Professional Development. CRESST Report 761. National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST). University of California, Los Angeles.

Reviews

  • Review of Deborah A. Harris and Patti Giuffre, Taking the Heat: Women Chefs and Gender Inequality in the Professional Kitchen in Enterprise & Society (March 2020).
  • “Make America Stylish Again,” review of Linda Przybyszewski, The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish in Reviews in American History (December 2017).
  • Review of Vicki Howard, From Main Street to Mall: the Rise and Fall of the American Department Store, in Enterprise & Society: The International Journal of Business History (June 2017).
  • Review of Sean Nixon, Hard Sell: Advertising, Affluence and Transatlantic Relations, c. 1951-69, in H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews (October 2016).
  • Review of Brent Shannon, The Cut of His Coat: Men, Dress, and Consumer Culture in Britain, 1860-1914, in Enterprise & Society: The International Journal of Business History (March 2010).

 

Grants and Awards

  • Bridging Cultures at Community Colleges, American Historical Association and National Endowment for the Humanities (2012 - 2015)           
    • Three-year professional development program to incorporate Pacific and Atlantic perspectives into the U.S. History curriculum.
  • Halloran Prize in the History of Corporate Responsibility, Business History Conference and the Center for Ethical Business Cultures at University of St. Thomas (2013)
  • Semifinalist for the Herman E. Krooss Prize for Best Dissertation in Business History, Business History Conference (2013)
  • Mary Wollstonecraft Dissertation Award, Center for the Study of Women, UCLA (2011)
    • Prize for best Ph.D. dissertation on women and/or gender using historical materials.

 

Presentations and Invited Lectures

  • “Cold War Consumer ‘Freedom’: Dorothy Shaver and American Fashion,” paper presented at American Historical Association annual conference, Denver (January 2017).
  • “Dorothy Shaver and the Keys to Her Success,” invited lecture at “Women in New York Fashion” symposium, Parsons School of Design, New York City (November 2015).
  • “Lessons Learned from the AHA’s Bridging Cultures Program,” roundtable participant at American Historical Associationannual conference, New York City (January 2015).
  • “‘A Store is a Citizen’: Civic Culture and Consumer Culture at Lord & Taylor Department Store, 1945-1959,” paper presented at Histories of American Capitalism, Cornell University (November 2014).
  • “Fashioning a Women’s Network in Interwar New York City,” paper presented at Intercontinental Cross-Currents: Women’s (Net-)Works across Europe and the Americas (1789-1939), Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany (December 2013).
  • “The Fashion Group: the Women’s Network in 1930s Fashion,” paper presented at the Western Association of Women Historians conference, Portland State University (May 2013).
  • “‘A Store is a Citizen’: Civic Culture and Consumer Culture at Lord & Taylor Department Store, 1945-1959,” paper presented at the Business History Conference, Columbus, OH (March 2013).
    • This paper won the Halloran Prize in the History of Corporate Responsibility.
  • “Consuming to Rebuild Europe: Department Stores and the Marshall Plan,” paper presented at History of Consumer Culture: Genealogies of Curiosity and Material Desire, Gakushuin University, Tokyo (March 2012).
  • “‘No. 1 Career Woman’: Dorothy Shaver, Femininity, and Feminism in 1930s and 1940s New York,” paper presented at the Western Association of Women Historians conference, Huntington Library, CA (April 2011).
  • “Fighting Communism with Clothes: Cold War Fashion and American Consumerism, 1945-1959,” paper presented at Cold War Cultures: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, University of Texas, Austin (October 2010).
  • “The Art of Selling Style at Lord & Taylor, 1924-1945,” paper presented at Distribution Networks for Textiles and Dress, c. 1700-1945, Centre for the History of Retailing and Distribution, University of Wolverhampton, England (September 2010).