Melissa Hampton

Melissa L. Hampton specializes in modern United States history, with an emphasis in U.S. immigration history, gender and women’s history, and the history of sexuality. Her current book manuscript examines how gender influenced the reception and resettlement of Cubans who arrived in the United States in what came to be known as the "Mariel Boatlift." She focuses especially on Cuban women and how they became central to many of the national debates and anxieties surrounding the status of Cuban refugees (and immigrants more generally) by the early 1980s. Dr. Hampton holds a PhD from the Department of History at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and undergraduate degrees in History and Gender and Women's Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

 

Research Interests

Modern America, U.S. Immigration History, History of Sexuality, Women and Gender

 

Publications

"'A Tent City is Not a Place for a Family': Mariel Cuban Women and Gendered Disorder at Regional Resettlement Facilities," Anthurium Special Issue: Marial @ 40 17 no. 2 (December 2021)

 

“Constructing the Deviant Woman: Gendered Stigma of the 1980 Cuban Mariel Migration” Special Issue: Gender and Migration Scholarship in the 21st Century American Behavioral Scientist 61, No. 10 (September 2017), pp. 1086-1102

 

Courses taught

U.S. From 1865

The Birth of Modern America, 1890-1929

Modern U.S., 1929-1960

U.S. From 1960

U.S. and the World

20th Century U.S. Foreign Relations

American Encounters from 1850

Migration, Mobility, and the Borders of Belonging

U.S. in Latin America

History of Sexuality in the United States

Social History of American Women

Historical Methods