Rachel Carson College Faculty Fellows
Sikina Jinnah is Rachel Carson College's new faculty chair!
The Chair of the Faculty is an Academic Senate member, other than the Provost, who is elected by the college Faculty to serve a two year term, and will serve as a member of the Executive Committee.
Dr. Jinnah is an Associate Professor in the Politics Department, an affiliated faculty member in the Environmental Studies Department, and a 2017 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Her research focuses on the shifting locations of power and influence in global environmental governance, and in particular the role of transnational actors in environmental decision-making. Her most recent projects examine how key norms in global climate politics shape power relations, the role of U.S. preferential trade agreements in shaping environmental policy in trading partner nations, and the politics of climate engineering governance.
- Title
- Distinguished Professor and Baumgarten Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies
- Director of the Center for Jewish Studies
- Division Humanities Division
- Department
- History Department
- Affiliations History of Consciousness Department, Jewish Studies, Literature Department, Stevenson College
- Office Location
- Humanities Building 1, 331 Humanities 1
- Office Hours Winter 2025: Tuesdays, 11:30pm to 1:30pm, email in advance to set up in-person or Zoom meeting during office hours
- Mail Stop Humanities Academic Services
- Mailing Address
- 1156 High Street
- Santa Cruz CA 95064
- Faculty Areas of Expertise Jewish Studies and Judaism, Religion and Secularism, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, African American / Black Studies, Hebrew, Yiddish, Ethnography
- Courses HIS 107, Religion and Modernity; HIS 196M, Shtetl: Eastern European Jewish Life; HIS 257, Shtetl: Eastern European Jewish Life; HIS 178A, Eighteenth Century European Intellectual History
Summary of Expertise
Modern Jewish history; Hasidism; History of Religions, African American Islam; history of eugenics in the United States; Gnosticism
Research Interests
Haredi Judaism; Zionism; Human evolution and culture
Biography, Education and Training
Ph.D. University of Chicago
Honors, Awards and Grants
Guggenheim Fellow
National Jewish Book Award
Saul Viener Book Prize
Jordan Schnitzer Book Award
Honorable Mention, Merle Curti Award
