History Professor Trevor R. Getz was recently named the winner of the Eugene Asher Award from the American Historical Association. Established in 1986, the award recognizes outstanding teaching and advocacy at two-year, four-year and graduate colleges and universities.
The award is given to inspiring teachers whose techniques and mastery of subject matter make a significant difference to students. Getz will be honored for outstanding postsecondary history teaching. He will receive the award at the American Historical Association annual meeting in New York in January.
The American Historical Association offers annual prizes honoring exceptional books, distinguished teaching and mentoring in the classroom, public history and other historical projects. Since 1896, the association has conferred more than 1,000 awards. This year’s finalists were selected from more than 1,400 entries.
Trevor R. Getz
Getz is a historian of Africa and the world. His interests include interdisciplinary methodologies, critical theory and popular ways of thinking about the past. His work emphasizes the tensions at intersections of power, knowledge and identity, particularly in colonial Africa and globally across the 19th and early 20th centuries.
His research goes beyond traditional academic scholarship, spanning graphic novels, animation and film. His graphic history book “Abina and the Important Men” (Oxford University Press, 2011) won the American Historical Association’s 2014 James Harvey Robinson Prize and the 2013 Children’s Africana Book Award for Older Readers. SF State’s Documentary Film Institute produced an award-winning animated documentary based on the book.
Getz’s other books include “A Primer for Teaching African History” (Duke University Press, 2018), “Slavery and Its Legacy in Ghana and the Diaspora” (Bloomsbury Press, 2017), “Modern Imperialism and Colonialism: A Global History” (Prentice Hall, 2010) and “The Long 19th Century: Crucible of Modernity” (Bloomsbury Press, 2018), which describes the global transformations that culminated in World War I.
Since 2016, Getz has served as a consultant for the New York Department of Education, helping develop 10th-grade history curriculum. He is lead content developer and manager for the Bill and Melinda Gates World History Project as well as a member of the advisory boards of SF State’s Veteran Documentary Corps and Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability. He is also editor of Oxford University Press’ African World Histories series and an editor of the Journal of West African History.
Getz joined SF State in 2002.
— Matt Itelson