This week’s guest is Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, Professor of History at Cal State San Marcos where she teaches comparative history with courses focused around Haitian history, revolutionary Europe, women in Jewish history and travel and contact in the early modern world.

Dr. Goldstein Sepinwall thought she’d go to law school initially but inspiring debates and discussions with friends in the dorms, including at Oxford University, started to change that. After undergrad, she applied to law school and PhD History programs and got into both! She even interned at the Supreme Court and worked as a legal secretary but the history program ultimately won out.

Dr. Goldstein Sepinwall is trained as a historian of France. She became captivated with the 18th century ideals of equality and how they applied to the conflicting existence of slavery in the French colony of Haiti. This led to her own studies of Haiti and the lack of knowledge around Haiti has motivated her to teach about it too.

It is clear that Dr. Goldstein Sepinwall loves her students and learning about their backgrounds. She seeks to build community in her classroom and students find themselves immersed in multi-sensory experiences that include the incorporation of food and dance breaks. It isn’t surprising that she took home a student-nominated award, the Harry E. Brakebill Outstanding Professor Award which is a top honor at Cal State San Marcos.

She has published three books books including her most recent, "Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games”. It is one of the first books about video games written by a historian.

In her spare time, and outside of pandemic times, Dr. Goldstein Sepinwall is also active with the San Diego Jewish Film Festival volunteering her time as an academic, speaker and chaffeur. We also talk about her parents who are also academics. You’ll have to listen to learn more!

Official Bio: Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall is Professor of History at California State University – San Marcos and past winner of the university’s Brakebill Distinguished Professor Award. She received her BA in History and Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and her MA and PhD in History from Stanford University. Her research specialties include the French and Haitian Revolutions, modern Haitian history, Slavery and Film, French colonialism, French-Jewish history, history and video games, and the history of gender. Her most recent book, Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games, was published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2021. Her previous works include the biography The Abbé Grégoire and the Making of Modern Universalism (University of California Press, new in paperback, 2021), and Haitian History: New Perspectives (Routledge, 2012).

Note from Rabiah (Host): I had an incredible time speaking with Dr. Goldstein Sepinwall. If you haven’t listened already, you’ll find her to be enthusiastic and open and quite frankly someone you could talk to all day. One thing that resonated with me is that as a student, she reached out to a respected professor for advice. That’s what I did just over a year ago when I was working on my short-term path. That really resonated with me. People want to help. Reach out to them. Also, in talking about her students, I learned she has a true interest in people and their backgrounds. The fact that she teaches non-history majors history and takes the time to know them and care made me think of the pivotal time I had at UCSD when I took science classes for non-science majors and had some incredible professors who also cared (and some who did not).

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Find Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrSepinwall

Book - Slave Revolt on Screen: https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/S/Slave-Revolt-on-Screen

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Mentioned in this episode: Kimberlé Crenshaw on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sandylocks

Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/246609/silencing-the-past-20th-anniversary-edition-by-michel-rolph-trouillot/

White Savior: The Movie, Seth Meyers fake trailer: https://youtu.be/T_RTnuJvg6U

Professor Ronald Angelo Johnson at Baylor’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/ronajohnson

Guerline Jozef - RFK Human Rights Award Winner: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/story/2021-10-28/haitian-activist-kennedy-human-rights

Chantel Prat episode: https://www.rabiahsaid.com/podcast/s3e13-chantel-prat

Nicole Pearson episode: https://www.rabiahsaid.com/podcast/s3e17-nicole-pearson

Miriam Hirst-Stein episode: https://www.rabiahsaid.com/podcast/s4e8-miriam-herst-stein