Education

1993 Yale University, Religious Studies, B.A
1995 Stony Brook University, Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages, M.A.
1998 Stony Brook University, History, M.A.
2003 Stony Brook University, History, Ph.D.

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Courses Taught

Wars and Revolutions in the Modern World
Cities and Global Connections
Honors Idea Lab: Social Sciences
Europe in the Middle Ages
Revolutionary Europe
Natural and Unnatural Disasters in Modern World History
Senior History Research Capstone Seminar
Modern Middle East and North Africa
History of the Islamic World
Introduction to African History
World History to 1500
World History Since 1500

Career Specialties

Spencer Segalla's research focuses on the history of colonialism and decolonization in Europe and North Africa. He has particular interests in the political and cultural impact of natural disasters, and of educational policies. 

Professional and Community Activities

Spencer Segalla began his career teaching English as a Second Language and International Baccalaureate History at the Casablanca American School in Morocco, where he taught for five years. In Morocco, he acted in plays produced by the Casablanca Amateur Dramatic Society and wrote and directed the production of an original play, The Legend of Johnny Soundbyte.

Since obtaining his Ph.D. in history in 2003, his work has examined French colonialism and its legacies in North and West Africa and in France.

Segalla's second book, Empire and Catastrophe: Decolonization and Environmental Disaster in North African and Mediterranean France since 1954, is available by the University of Nebraska Press in paperback, hardcover and in a free open-access ebook at OAPEN. His first book, The Moroccan Soul: French Education, Colonial Ethnography and Muslim Resistance, was published by UNP in 2009. 

Segalla's interest in French colonial ethnological notions of an immutable "Moroccan Soul" sparked his investigation into the origins of discourses asserting that modernist urban planning had turned post-earthquake Agadir into a "city without a soul." This led him to apply his interests in colonialism and decolonization to the intersections of geoenvironmental disasters, environmental history and cultures of decolonization in Algeria, Morocco and the declining French empire.

Honors and Awards

Outstanding Teaching Award, University of Tampa College of Social Sciences, Mathematics and Education, 2014-2015.
American Institute of Maghrib Studies Short-Term Research Grant (for research in Morocco), February 2014.
J. Eccles article prize, French Colonial Historical Society, 2003.
Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for Research Related to Education, 2002-2003.
Best Teaching Assistant Award. Stony Brook Department of History, 1999.

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