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
Links (3)
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.
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).
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.
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”
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.
“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.
Selected Articles (3)
Iran-US Relations
American History2019 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.”
‘I'm glad I'm not a Saudi woman’: the First Gulf War and US encounters with Saudi gender relations
Cambridge Review of International Affairs2014 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.
Truman and the Middle East
Wiley Online Library2012 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).
