ALYSSA GOLDSTEIN SEPINWALL, Ph.D.
CaliforniaStateUniversity - San Marcos
Department of History
San Marcos, CA92096
(760) 750-8053 (office) -- (760) 750-3430 (fax)
EDUCATION
STANFORDUNIVERSITY, Ph.D. in History, 1998; M.A., 1993.
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. B.A. in Political Philosophy and Intellectual History, 1991. Phi Beta Kappa.
ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE
CALIFORNIASTATEUNIVERSITY – SAN MARCOS, History Department
Associate Professor (8/04 – pres.); Assistant Professor (1/99 – 7/04)
STANFORDUNIVERSITY, History Department
Instructor (1995); Research Assistant (1995); Teaching Assistant (1993-4)
PUBLICATIONS
Books
The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). Reviewed in 26 academic journals and general-interest publications in the United States, Europe, Japan, Australia and Israel.
L’abbé Grégoire et la Révolution française: les origines de l'universalisme moderne [French translation with new introduction](Bécherel: Éditions Les Perséides, 2008).
Journal Articles and Book Chapters
“The Specter of Saint-Domingue: American and French Reactions to the Haitian Revolution,” in The World of the Haitian Revolution, eds. Norman Fiering and David Geggus (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 317 – 338.
“Henri-Baptiste Grégoire,” in Encyclopedia of Blacks in European Civilization, ed. Eric Martone (Wesport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2008), I: 253-4.
“Atlantic Revolutions,” in Encyclopedia of the Modern World, ed. Peter Stearns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), I: 284 – 289.
“Defining the Nation: The Abbé Grégoire and the Problem of Diversity in the French Revolution,” in The Human Tradition in Modern Europe, eds. Cheryl A. Koos and Cora Granata (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), 1 - 14.
“The Abbé Grégoire and the Atlantic Republic of Letters,” in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 116, pt. 2 (2006; published 2007): 317 – 335; reprinted in Liberty! Égalité! Independencia!: Print Culture, Enlightenment and Revolution in the Americas, 1776 – 1838, eds. David S. Shields and Caroline Sloat(Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 2007): 97 - 115.
“What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing With a Priest Like This? Biography, Jewish Studies, and Gentile Subjects,” in AJS Perspectives (Spring 2007): 30 – 32.
“Napoleon, French Jews, and the Idea of Regeneration,” in CCAR Journal 54 [special issue on Sanhedrin Bicentennial] (Winter 2007), 55 – 76.
“L’abbé Grégoire and the Metz Contest: The View from New Documents,” in Revue des Études Juives 166, nos. 1-2 (January - June 2007), pp. 273 – 288.
“Atlantic Amnesia: French Historians, the Haitian Revolution and the 2004-6 CAPES Exam,” in Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 34 (2006): 300-314 [electronic version available at
“Burn!” and “Julien Raimond,” Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellions, ed. Junius P. Rodriguez (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006), 1: 86-88; 2:411-413.
“François-Marie-Arouet de Voltaire” and “Henri Grégoire”in Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, ed. Richard S. Levy (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005), I: 283-84 and II: 746-48.
“Strategic Friendships: Jewish Intellectuals, the Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution,” in Renewing the Past, Reconfiguring Jewish Culture: From Al-Andalus to the Haskalah, eds. Adam Sutcliffe and Ross Brann (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004): 189 – 212.
“Eliminating Race, Eliminating Difference: Blacks, Jews, and the Abbé Grégoire," in The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France, eds. Tyler Stovall and Sue Peabody (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003): 28 – 41.
“La révolution haïtienne et les États-Unis: Étude historiographique,” in 1802. Rétablissement de l’esclavagedans les colonies françaises: Aux origines de Haïti, eds. Yves Benot and Marcel Dorigny (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2003), 387 – 401.
“Henri Grégoire,” in Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, ed. Alan C. Kors (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 2002), II: 160.
“L’héritage de la Révolution française aux États-Unis: le rôle d’Henri Grégoire dans le monde atlantique,” in La France et les Amériques au temps de Jefferson et Miranda, eds. Marcel Dorigny and Marie-Jeanne Rossignol (Paris: Société des Études Robespierristes/Institut d’histoire de la Révolution française, 2001), 49 - 61.
“Exporting the Revolution: Grégoire, Haiti, and the Colonial Laboratory, 1815 - 1827,” in The Abbé Grégoire and His World [series International Archives of the History of Ideas 169], eds. Jeremy D. Popkin and Richard H. Popkin (Dordrecht, Neth.: Kluwer Academic Press, 2000), 41 – 69.
“Grégoire et Haïti: un héritage compliqué” in Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer, no. 328 – 329 (2000): 107-128; reprinted in Grégoire et la cause des noirs: combats et projets, eds. Yves Benot and Marcel Dorigny (Paris : Société française d'histoire d'outre-mer /Association pour l'étude de la colonisation européenne, 2000).
“Les paradoxes de la régénération révolutionnaire: le cas de l’abbé Grégoire,” Annales historiques de la Révolution française, no. 321 (juillet/septembre 2000): 69 - 90.
Book Reviews and Review Essays
Review of Philip P. Boucher, France and the American Tropics to 1700: Tropics of Discontent? (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), in American Historical Review 114, no. 3 (June 2009), 803 - 804.
Review of Lisa Moses Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-Century France (Stanford University Press, 2006), in H-France Review (book review venue for French Historical Studies) 7, no. 15 (2007), available at
Review of Jennifer Heuer, The Family and the Nation: Gender and Citizenship in Revolutionary France, 1789 – 1830 (Cornell University Press, 2005), in Law and History 25, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 225 - 226.
Review of Jay Berkovitz, Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650 – 1860 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), in Jewish History20, no. 3/4 (Fall 2006): 363 – 368.
Review of Megan Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island: Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Mauritius (Duke University Press, 2005), in American Historical Review111, no. 2 (April 2006): 601-2.
“A Secret Relationship? Jews and Blacks in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.” Review of Jonathan Schorsch, Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2004), for H-Atlantic (December 2005), available at
Review of Nigel Aston, Religion and Revolution in France, 1780 – 1804(Catholic University Press, 2000), in Jewish Quarterly Review95, no. 4 (Fall 2005): 746 – 750.
Review of Steven Kale, French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability From the Old Regime to the Revolution of 1848 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), in Social History 30, no. 3 (August 2005): 416-7.
Review of Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), H-France Review 5 (Feb. 2005), no. 24,available at
Review of Frederic Cople Jaher, The Jews and the Nation: Revolution, Emancipation, State Formation, and the Liberal Paradigm in America and France (Princeton University Press, 2002), in The Historian66, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 899-900.
Review Essay onIlana Y. Zinguer and Sam W. Bloom, eds., L’antisémitisme éclairé. Inclusion et exclusion depuis l’Epoque des Lumières jusqu’à l’affaire Dreyfus / Inclusion and Exclusion: Perspectives on Jews from the Enlightenment to the Dreyfus Affair (Brill, 2003),H-France Review 4(Aug. 2004), no. 80,available at
Review Essay on Rita Hermon-Belot, L’abbé Grégoire, la politique et la vérité (Seuil, 2000), in Zion LXVII, no. 1 (2002): 88 – 95.
“French Abolitionism with an American Accent” (commissioned review essay on translation of Henri Grégoire’s De la littérature des nègres), H-France Electronic Network, H-Net, January 1998, available at
Translations
“America,” “California,” “Canada,” “Colonist,” “West Indies” (2003); “Colony” (2004); “Algonquins” and “Iroquois” (2005). Encyclopedia of Diderot & D’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project, eds. Dena Goodman and Jennifer Popiel (
AWARDS AND HONORS
CaliforniaStateUniversity - San Marcos
Sabbatical Award, 2005-2006
University Professional Development Grant, 2005, 2002
Winner, President’s Award for Innovation in Teaching, 2004-2005
Nominee, President’s Award for Scholarship and Creative Activity, 2004, 2003
FacultyCenter Professional Development Grant, 2004
College of Arts and Sciences- Faculty Development Grant, 2005, 2003, 2002, 1999
Travel Grant, University Global Affairs Committee, 2003
Internationalization Grant, University Global Affairs Committee, 2003, 2002
Nominee, Brakebill Outstanding Professor Award, 2001
HarvardUniversity
Fellow, International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World (1500 – 1800), 2005, 2000
California State University - Chancellor’s Office
International Faculty Partnership Seminar – Paris, 2003
Henry Huntington Library
Keck Fellowship, 2002 [declined]
California State Lottery Grant(with Patty Seleski and Vicki Golich)
Film Series on “Other ‘Others’: Multiculturalism in a Global Context,” 1999
University of Pennsylvania - Center for Advanced Judaic Studies
Postdoctoral Research Award -- Lucius N. Littauer Fellow, 9/98 – 12/98
StanfordUniversity
Institute for Research on Women and Gender - Dissertation Fellow, 1998
Weter Fellowship, 1997– 1998
Empires and Cultures Workshop Travel and Study Award, Summer 1996
School of Humanities and Sciences - Graduate Research Opportunities Fund Award, 1995- 1996
History Department Fellowship, 1992 - 1996
Newhouse Foundation
Grant in Jewish Studies, Summer 1996, Summer 1997
Mellon Foundation
Dissertation Fellowship, 1996 – 1997
Summer Pre-Dissertation Fellowship, 1995
University of Pennsylvania – School of Arts and Sciences
Nassau Fund Undergraduate Research Award, 1990
COURSES TAUGHT
CSUSM
Survey Courses:
∙ World Civilizations to 1500 (Hist. 201)
∙ World Civilizations since 1500 (Hist. 202)
Upper-Division European History Courses:
∙ Society and Culture in Modern Europe (Hist. 323)
∙ Enlightenment and European Society (Hist. 324)
∙ Revolutionary Europe (Hist. 325)
∙ Jews in French History (reading course, F ’00, Hist. 398)
Upper-Division Transnational/Comparative History Courses:
∙ Comparative French Colonialism, from the Caribbean to Indochina (Hist. 381)
∙ Travel and Contact in the Early Modern World (Hist. 382)
∙ Women and Jewish History (Hist. 383)
∙ Research Seminar on Comparative Global Revolutions (Hist. 460G)
Upper-Division Historical Theory/Methodology Courses:
∙ Historical Methods and Writing (Hist. 301)
∙ Research Seminar in ‘The New Biography’ (Hist. 460)
STANFORD
∙ Writing about Early Modern History, Program in Cultures, Ideas and Values (CIV) (Instructor, Win ’95)
∙ Modern French History, 1750-1994 (teaching assistant, for Prof. Colin Jones, S ’94)
∙ Colonial and Revolutionary American History (teaching assistant, for Prof. Jack Rakove, F ’93)
PAPERS AND INVITED TALKS
Chair/Commentator on Papers by Isabelle Denis, Laura Muñoz and Angela Winand. Session on “Culture and the Memory of Empire.” French Colonial Historical Society, San Francisco, CA, May 29, 2009.
“The Specter of Saint-Domingue: The Haitian Revolution in Nineteenth-Century France." Roundtable on the Haitian Revolution in the Nineteenth Century. Modern Languages Association, San Francisco, CA, Dec. 27, 2008 [invited guest of Nineteenth-Century French Literature Division].
“‘Is This Tocqueville or George Bush’? Teaching French Colonialism in Southern California After 9/11.” Plenary Session on Teaching French Colonialism. Western Society for French History, Quebec, Canada, November 7, 2008 [invited speaker].
“Robespierre, Old Regime Feminist? The Academy of Arras’s Debate on Women, 1787.” Society for French Historical Studies, New Brunswick, NJ, April 5, 2008.
“Jews and Modernity: Controversies over Napoleon and the Sanhedrin.” San Diego Rabbinical Association [Reform/Conservative/Reconstruction rabbis in San Diego County and Tijuana, B.C.], San Diego, CA, November 13, 2007 [invited speaker].
“Conversation with Elie Wiesel [via Teleconference].” “Carlsbad Reads Together: Night,” Carlsbad Public Library, Carlsbad, CA, April 19, 2007 [invited speaker].
“Toward Assimilation? The French Revolution, Modernity and the Jews.” Jewish Studies Lecture Series, California State University – Northridge, February 22, 2007 [invited speaker].
“Reconsidering Napoleon and the Sanhedrin: What Political Culture and Colonial Studies Can Teach Us.” Roundtable on “Napoleon, the Jews and the Sanhedrin: Bicentennial Reflections.” Association for Jewish Studies, San Diego, CA, December 19, 2006.
“De nouveaux documents inédits sur l'abbé Grégoire, de la Lorraine à Harlem.” Congrès international sur l’abbé Grégoire, Metz, France (sponsored by Lorraine Conseil régional/Universités de Paris-I, Paris-VIII, Nancy-II and Metz), November 30, 2006 [invited speaker].
“Slavery and Abolition in the French Empire.” Global Enlightenment Seminar, California State University – Long Beach, October 24, 2006 [invited speaker].
“Atlantic Amnesia: French Historians, the Haitian Revolution, and the 2004-6 CAPES Exam.” Western Society for French History, Long Beach, CA, October 21, 2006.
Chair, Panel on “Gens de Couleur and the Eighteenth-Century Black Atlantic: Race as Social Category and Lived Experience.” Western Society for French History, Long Beach, CA, October 21, 2006.
"The Abbé Grégoire and the Atlantic Republic of Letters." Liberty/Egalité/Independencia: Symposium on Print Culture, Enlightenment, and Revolution in the Americas, 1776-1826. American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA, June 16, 2006 [invited speaker].
“The Abbé Grégoire and the Politics of Difference in Modern France.” European Studies Faculty Group, University of California – San Diego, March 8, 2006 [invited speaker].
Chair/Participant. Roundtable on “Nationality, Hybridity, and Métissage in the French Colonial Empires.” American Historical Association, Philadelphia, PA, January 8, 2006.
“Waiting for the Ships to Come In: Marie LeMasson-LeGolft and the Paradoxes of Antislavery Sentiment in Prerevolutionary Le Havre.” Western Society for French History, Colorado Springs, CO, October 29, 2005.
“Atlantic Amnesia: Memory and the Haitian Revolution in the United States and France.” Atlantic Soundings: Tenth Anniversary Conference of the Harvard International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World. Cambridge, MA, August 11, 2005.
Commentator on Papers by G. Matthew Adkins, Stephen Auerbach and Jeremy Popkin. Session on “Liberty and Slavery in Eighteenth-Century French Thought.” Society for French Historical Studies, Stanford, CA, March 18, 2005.
Chair. Panel on “Images of the Colonial Experience in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century France.” Western Society for French History, Lubbock, TX, October 2, 2004.
“The Specter of Saint-Domingue: American and French Reactions to the Haitian Revolution.” John Carter Brown Library, BrownUniversity, conference on “The Haitian Revolution: 200 Years After,” June 20, 2004 [invited speaker]; earlier version given at UC Multi-Campus Research Unit conference on “Bondage, Subjugation and the New Slavery in Comparative Perspective,” University of California – Davis, May 28, 2004 [invited speaker].
“Turning Your Dissertation Into a Book.” StanfordUniversity, History Department,Brown Bag Talk for Graduate Students, May 24, 2004[invited speaker].
Moderator. Workshop on Teaching Large Classes, Wrap-Up Session. CSUSM, FacultyCenter, March 16, 2004.
“Creating a ‘French Nation’”/“A Religious Revolution?” University of California – Irvine, History Department, Seminar on the French Revolution, November 12, 2003 [invited speaker].
“Transcending ‘The Nation,’ or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love World History.” Western Society for French History, Newport Beach, CA, October 31, 2003 [organized panel on “Teaching Beyond the Hexagon”].
Chair. Session on “Constructing the Other in Old Regime France.” Western Society for French History, Newport Beach, CA, October 30, 2003.
Commentator on Papers by Lisa Cody, Elizabeth Colwill and Theresa Ann Smith. Session on “Gender Revolutions.” International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies – Eleventh Quadrennial Congress on the Enlightenment/Joint Meeting with American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Los Angeles, CA, August 7, 2003.
“Paradise Across the Ocean? Imagining California, Imagining France.” CSU-MICEFA International Faculty Partnership Seminar, Paris, France, June 24, 2003 [revised version given as Inaugural Faculty Brown Bag Research Colloquium Speaker in Kellogg Library Grand Opening Week, CSUSM, FacultyCenter, March 2, 2004].
“Strategic Friendships: Jewish Intellectuals, the Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution.” Association for Jewish Studies,Los Angeles, CA, Dec. 16, 2002 [revised version given at Western Jewish Studies Association, San Diego, CA, March 28, 2004].
“Creating a ‘French Nation’ during the French Revolution.” Mellon French Culture Workshop, StanfordHumanitiesCenter, October 17, 2002 [invited speaker].
“Icon of Universalism: Abbé Grégoire’s Life After Death.” San DiegoStateUniversity, History Department Seminar, September 26, 2002.
“Early US-Haitian Relations: An Overview.” International Conference on “Ruptures et continuités: la politique coloniale française.” Université de Paris-8 [co-sponsors includedUNESCO, French Culture Ministry, Radio France Outremer], June 22, 2002 [invited speaker].
“Teaching the Enlightenment in World History.” Western Society for French History, Los Angeles, CA, Nov. 9, 2000.
“Building an Atlantic Republican Network: Henri Grégoire, the Americas and the Legacy of the French Revolution.” Harvard University International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, August 11, 2000 [available in Seminar’sWorking Paper Series, No. 00012].
“Job and Teaching Strategies for the CSU and Beyond.” Stanford University, History Department, First-Year Seminar, June 5, 2000 [invited speaker; revised versions given 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009].
“The French Revolution and the Birth of Modern Colonialism: French Abolitionists in the Directory Years.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Philadelphia, PA, April 12, 2000.
“Christian Voltaires? Religion, Enlightenment, and theSociété des Philantropes de Strasbourg.” Society for French Historical Studies, Tempe, AZ, March 31, 2000 [co-organized panel on “Enlightenment, Christianity, and Enlightened Christianity”].
“Remaking Humanity: Jews, Blacks, and the French Revolution.” New Perspectives in Judaic Studies public lecture series, Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies, San DiegoStateUniversity, February 23, 2000 [invited speaker].
“Transatlantic Views on Race and Republicanism: Thomas Jefferson and Henri Grégoire.” Western Society for French History, Pacific Grove, CA, November 1, 1999 [co-organized panel on “Debates on Race and Slavery in France, 1800 – 1848”].
“The First Post-Colonial Leaders and their ‘Only European Friend’: Cultural Strategies in Early Nineteenth-Century Haiti.” World History Association, Victoria, BC, Canada, June 27, 1999 [organized panel on “Cultural Negotiation in the (Post-) Colonial Francophone World: Haiti, Vietnam and North Africa”].
Commentator on Papers by Sheila Donnelly, Soo Chun Lu, and Maggie Pickering. Session on “Women as Participants/Observers in Colonialism.” World History Association, Victoria, BC, Canada, June 26, 1999.
“Blacks, Jews, Women and Dialect Speakers: The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution’s Problem of Difference.” International Conference on “Dialogues with the Past and Present: Jewish Cultural Formation from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment.” University of Pennsylvania, April 28, 1999 [invited speaker].
“Multiculturalism in the Eighteenth Century? Blacks, Jews and the French Revolution.” BinghamtonUniversity, Judaic Studies/Africana Studies Depts., March 29, 1999 [invited speaker].
“Exporting the Revolution: Grégoire, Haiti and the Colonial Laboratory.” The JohnsHopkinsUniversity, History Department Seminar, December 3, 1998 [invited speaker]. Earlier version presented at Clark Library Conference on the Abbé Henri Grégoire, UCLA, February 6, 1997 [invited speaker].
“A Physical, Moral and Political Regeneration: The Abbé Grégoire, the Jews, and the French Revolution.” Western Society for French History, Boston, MA, November 6, 1998.
“Icon of Emancipation: Jewish Intellectuals and the Abbé Grégoire.” Seminar on “Enlightenment, Jews and European Society,”University of Pennsylvania - Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, November 4, 1998.
“‘Regeneration’ and the French Revolution’s Politics of Difference.” International Conference on Imperialism and Identity, Center for African Studies, UC-Berkeley, February 28, 1998.
“Regenerating the Nation, Regenerating its Parts: The Abbé Grégoire and the Constituent Assembly.” Society for French Historical Studies, Lexington, KY, March 21, 1997.
“Jewish ‘Orientalism?’ West End Jewish Identity and the Early Zionist Debate in London, 1890 - 1899.” PacificCoast Conference on British Studies, Sacramento, CA, March 25, 1995.
DISCIPLINARY SERVICE
American Historical Association, Local Arrangements Committee, 2010 Annual Meeting – San Diego, 12/08 – pres.
World History Association, Local Arrangements Committee, 2010 Annual Meeting - San Diego, 03/09 – pres.
Society for French Historical Studies, Program Committee, 2010 Annual Meeting – Tempe, AZ, 09/09 – pres.
French Colonial Historical Society, Program Committee, 2010 Annual Meeting – Paris, 10/09 – pres.
Western Society for French History, Millstone/Gargan Prizes Selection Committee (best interdisciplinary paper and best graduate student paper presented at annual conference), 10/07 – pres.; Secretary, 10/03 – 10/06 (international organization with 500 members).