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Kelly Shannon, Ph.D. - Florida Atlantic University. Boca Raton, FL, US

Kelly Shannon, Ph.D.

Associate Professor and Executive Director, Center for Peace, Justice, & Human Rights (PJHR) | Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, FL, UNITED STATES

Kelly Shannon, Ph.D., specializes in the history of U.S. foreign relations with the Islamic world and women's human rights.

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Biography

Kelly J. Shannon, Ph.D. is associate professor of history and the executive director of the Center for Peace, Justice, and Human Rights at Florida Atlantic University. She specializes in the 20th century history of U.S. foreign relations, with particular attention to the Islamic world, Iran, transnational history, women, and human rights. She is the author of U.S. Foreign Policy and Muslim Women’s Human Rights (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). She earned her Ph.D. at Temple University, her M.A. at the University of Connecticut, and her B.A. from Vassar College. Shannon is currently working on a book about U.S. relations with Iran during the first half of the 20th century, tentatively titled "The Ties That Bind: U.S.-Iran Relations, 1905-1953," as well as a book geared toward a general audience on the transnational history of U.S. feminism(s), "American Feminism and the World since 1945: An International History."

Areas of Expertise (8)

Modern Iran

Women's Rights

Human Rights

Transnational Feminism

U.S. Foreign Relations

20th Century U.S.

Diplomatic History

Modern Islamic World

Education (3)

Temple University: Ph.D., History 2010

University of Connecticut: M.A., History 2005

Vassar College: B.A., History 2003

Selected Media Appearances (6)

Pre-war U.S. support for Afghan women’s rights offers a blueprint for the future

The Washington Post  online

2021-08-24

On Aug. 15, the Taliban completed its conquest of Afghanistan by seizing Kabul. These events were tragically similar to those of 25 years ago, when Kabul fell to the Taliban in September 1996.

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The Baskerville Lecture Series with Professor Kelly J. Shannon

Baskerville Institute  online

2021-02-22

Saving Persia from International Intrigue and Financial Disaster: The Story of W. Morgan Shuster, February 22, 2021, 12:00 pm ( US MT), 2:00 pm (EST).

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Women’s Human Rights and U.S. Relations with the Islamic World: Advice for the Biden Administration

Berkeley Center  online

2020-12-11

The incoming Biden administration must place women’s human rights at the center of the U.S. foreign policy agenda. Respect for human rights, especially women’s rights, is a crucial component of pluralism, democracy, prosperity, and peace.

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How the US and Iran developed a fraught relationship

KCRW  online

2020-01-09

Guest: Kelly Shannon, history professor at Florida Atlantic University, author of "U.S. Foreign Policy and Muslim Women's Human Rights”

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War with Iran is not inevitable - but the U.S. must change course

Washington Post  online

2020-01-08

U.S.-Iran relations have been increasingly tense since Donald Trump took office, but Trump's decision to kill Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani has led the U.S. and Iranian governments to inch closer to war than ever before - Iran reportedly retaliated by striking multiple U.S. bases in Iraq early on Wednesday.

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“Persepolis” and the Middle East Today

Alaska Public Media  online

2012-02-16

Since the publication of its first volume in 2003, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis has rightly received critical and scholarly acclaim. Time, Newsweek and the New York Times praised Satrapi’s autobiography, both for its innovative use of comic-book format and for the insight it provides into life in revolutionary and post-revolutionary Iran.

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Selected Articles (3)

Iran-US Relations

American History

2019 Historian James A. Bill famously described America’s relationship with Iran as a tragedy. “Few international relationships,” he wrote, “have had a more positive beginning than that which characterized Iranian-American contacts for more than a century.”

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‘I'm glad I'm not a Saudi woman’: the First Gulf War and US encounters with Saudi gender relations

Cambridge Review of International Affairs

2014 On 6 November 1990, nearly 50 Saudi women staged a protest against the ban on women operating motor vehicles in Saudi Arabia. Occurring in the midst of the First Gulf War, the women's protest was a political statement about the harsh restrictions placed on women in the Middle Eastern country which both reflected and influenced Saudi society’s encounter with their American allies during the war.

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Truman and the Middle East

Wiley Online Library

2012 Writing in the 1960s, scholars David McLellan and John Reuss (1967) claimed,“If foreign and military policies during the Truman Administration had to be summarized in a word, that word would be seminal”(p. 15).

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