Quam-Wickham
Nancy Quam-Wickham, Ph.D.
Credentials:
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley
B.A. San Francisco State University
Contact Information:
Nancy.Quam-Wickham@csulb.edu
562 985-4431
Office: FO2-102
California State University, Long Beach
1250 Bellflower Blvd., MS 1601
Long Beach, CA 90840-1601
Nancy Quam-Wickham is a Professor of History, and was Chair of the Department from 2005-2015. Her research interests include environmental, gender, and social history, oral history, history pedagogy, and assessment practices in higher education. Prior to becoming department Chair, she was Editor of The History Teacher journal. She is a participant in the American Historical Association’s Tuning project, and has presented her work on Tuning in History at many professional meetings. In October 2014, Dr. Quam-Wickham was one of twelve scholars nationwide to be named as a faculty coach for the Degree Qualifications Profile project, a collaborative initiative endorsed by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, with origins in the Bologna Process.
Professor Quam-Wickham is particularly interested in the impact of natural resource development and exploitation in the American West, including the Pacific Basin. She is currently working on a study of whaling in the Pacific Ocean from the late 1700s to the mid-1900s. She is also finishing an article on transforming the lower-division United States history survey course by embracing active learning pedagogies; see the Daily 49er story here and the links below for more information about Dr. Quam-Wickham’s “U.S. History Lab” class, in which students produced curriculum materials for at-risk high school history students in Long Beach Unified School District. In her spare time, Professor Quam-Wickham enjoys traveling, sea-kayaking, hiking, and backpacking in the Sierras.
Why Study History? History, the Liberal Arts, and Employment for humanities majors
Selected Multimedia Publications
Equity and Obligation: The Importance of Pedagogical Currency (2015) – short comments from the joint SSRC/AHA Panel in New York, January 2015 – Link coming soon!
Selected Publications:
“Los Angeles’ Uneasy Relationship with Petroleum,” Progressive Democracy Quarterly 23 (2014).
“Tuning the Introductory U.S. History Survey Course” (in progress, 2013)
“‘Another World’: The Metropolis and Working-class Culture in Los Angeles’ Blue-Collar Suburbs, 1920-1935,” in Making of the Metropolis: Los Angeles in the 1920s
edited by Bill Deverell and Tom Sitton (University of California Press, 2001)
“Re-reading Man’s Conquest of Nature: Work, Culture, and the Historical Construction of Masculinity in Western Extractive Industries,” Men and Masculinities (1999)
“‘Cities Sacrificed on the Altar of Oil’: Popular Opposition to Oil Development in 1920s Los Angeles,” Environmental History (1998)
Courses Taught:
Undergraduate Program
Lower-division: Recent U.S. History (History 173)
Upper-division core: Methodologies of History (History 301), Senior Seminar (History 499)
Upper-division electives: Men and Masculinities (History 309), American West (History 471), California (History 473), Recent American Environmental History (History 482). Preparing for a Career with a History B.A. (History 490).