DEMOCRATIC VISIONS FACULTY FELLOWS

Francisco Beltrán is Assistant Professor of History at Cal Poly Pomona. He teaches classes in History and Ethnic and Women’s Studies, on topics that include Chicanx and Latinx history, race and ethnicity, immigration, the US-Mexico borderlands, and oral history. He is co-author, along with Paul Spickard and Laura Hooton, of the revised edition of Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity, which examines US immigration history through race and ethnicity lenses. He is currently working on two additional manuscripts; the first, titled Voices of the People: The Mexican American Community Press of San Diego, examines different forms of Mexican American-Chicana/o civil rights activism captured by community newspapers published in San Diego, California, during the 1960s and 1970s. The other, American Immigration: Facts and Fictions, co-authored with Rena Heinrich, is an upcoming entry in ABC-CLIO/Bloomsbury Publishing’s Fact and Fictions series focused on ten misconceptions about American immigration history.

Hend Gilli-Elewy is a Professor in the History Department at Cal Poly Pomona, after having previously served as the Associate Dean and Interim Dean of the College of Education and Integrative Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the University of Cologne, Germany. Her research and scholarly interests include social, historical, and religious aspects of the early and medieval Islamic World, the Mongol Ilkhanids, slavery in Islam, and the history of Baghdad and Iraq. Her publications include: “Baghdad under the Late Abbasid Califs,” Baghdad: From its Beginnings to the 14th Century, ed. Jens Scheiner and Isabel Toral-Niehoff, Leiden, Brill, 2022; “Baghdad between Cairo and Tabriz Emissaries to the Mamluks as Expressions of Local Political Ambitions and Ideologies during the 13th and 14th centuries,” Mamluk Cairo: A crossroads for emissaries, Leiden, Brill, 2018; “On Women, Power, and Politics during the Last Phase of the Ilkhanate,” Arabica 59:6 (2012); “The Mongol court in Baghdad: The Juwayni brothers between local court and central court,” Court Cultures in the Muslim World: Seventh to nineteenth centuries, ed. A. Fuess and J.P. Hartung, London, N.Y., 2011; “Al-Hawadith al-Jami‘a: a Contemporary Account on the Mongol Conquest of Baghdad, 656/1258,” Arabica 58 (2011); Bagdad nach dem Fall des Kalifats. Die Geschichte einer ilkhanischen Provinz (1258-1335), Berlin, Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 2000.

Rachael Hill is a historian of Africa whose research focuses on nineteenth and twentieth-century histories of health, science, and medicine. Her work lies at the intersection of scholarship on healing in Africa and the field of science and technology studies in the global south. Her research interests include African medicinal plants, esoteric ritual practice, the social etiology of disease, public health, imperialism, and the relationship between power and the production of knowledge. As an educator she looks to connect scholarship to the concerns of public life and pedagogy to civic engagement. She is currently a faculty advisor to three student organizations: History Club, Student Initiative for Justice and Students for a Quality Education.

Ayana Jamieson is an educator, mythologist, and depth psychologist. She is the founder and creative director of the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network, established in 2011. She is an assistant professor of ethnic studies and the advisory board and core faculty of The Democracy Institute at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She also is a contributor to Hyandai Motor’s Artlab Editorial presents, American Artist: Earthseed (2024) and co-shaper of the Monophobic Response for the Getty Foundations PST+ART. Dr. Jamieson is the advising curator for the New Children’s Museums Octavia E. Butler: Seeding Futures. Her essay, “Far Beyond the Stars” appears in the Black Futures anthology. She has also published in Sierra Club Magazine, The Feminist Wire, Belonging Identity, Language Diversity, New Global Politics, Public Books and elsewhere. She is also a member of the Speculative Environmental Futures Collective at UCSD.

Daniel Lewis is a professor in the History Department and currently finishing a term as chair. He has published a number of works on Argentina, South America, and Economic History. At Cal Poly Pomona, he serves as the department specialist on Latin America. As an instructor, he has decades of experience teaching general courses on the United States. He has participated in a range of public humanities projects and programs centered on democracy, citizenship, and community voices from past generations. He once toured the United States as part of a modern Chautauqua program, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, that explored themes and topics pulled from Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. His current interests are focused on the historical evolution of populism in the Americas.

John Lloyd is a professor of history at Cal Poly Pomona, where he teaches courses on the Civil War and Reconstruction; the Gilded Age and Progressive Era; the Depression and New Deal; American Constitutional history; labor history; Transportation and Environmental history; and research methods. Dr. Lloyd has been an advisor for several Teaching American History (TAH) programs in local school districts. Dr Lloyd earned his Ph.D. in History from the Claremont Graduate University in 2000. His dissertation research explored the growth of ideas about race, civil rights, and equal citizenship after the Civil War. He has published numerous articles and book reviews on a variety of topics in post-Civil War US history, and more recently has published articles on the evolution of transportation and public space in 20th century US urban environments. Since 2016, Dr Lloyd has been involved in efforts to improve and encourage sustainable transportation alternatives at Cal Poly Pomona and surrounding communities. He currently serves on the Academic Senate, chairs the Senate Budget Committee, and is co-chair of the Alternative Transportation Committee.

Mary Anne Mendoza-Davé is Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at Cal Poly Pomona. She teaches courses on Comparative Politics, colonial legacies, and the politics of states across Asia. As a first-generation student, she completed her Ph.D. at UC Irvine with a focus on colonial education policies and separatist rebellion in Southeast Asia, specifically in the Philippines and Burma. Her methods of expertise are case studies, process-tracing, content analysis, and archival work. This research has been published with PS: Political Science and Politics, Asian Politics and Policy, and the University of Michigan Press.

Michael Slaughter is Associate Professor of History at Cal Poly Pomona. He specializes in 20th-century American history, African-American history, and the history of education. He is also the advisor for the pre-credential option within the History major.

Liza Taylor joined the Department of Political Science at Cal Poly Pomona in the fall of 2022 where she teaches courses in political theory, with a special focus on critical democratic theory, which incorporates feminist theory, critical race theory, and theories of intersectional activism. Informed largely by early Women of Color feminism, Dr Taylor’s research focuses on feminist theories of intersectional activism, feminist articulations of freedom, critical encounters with poststructuralism, and centering liberatory pedagogy in the political science classroom.