Kelly Shannon

Assistant Professor
Department of History

Dr. Shannon specializes in the history of U.S. foreign relations, with particular attention to the post-1945 period. Her research focuses on human rights and U.S. foreign policy. Her current book manuscript, tentatively entitled Veiled Intentions: Islam, Women's Human Rights, and U.S. Foreign Policy Since 1979, explores the integration of American concerns for women's human rights into U.S. policy towards the Islamic world since the Iranian Revolution. Her next project will explore how the Clinton Administration approached dealing with human rights issues in its foreign policy. Her other recent publications include: “Truman and the Middle East” in Blackwell Companion to Harry S. Truman, ed. Dan Margolies (Blackwell, 2012); “The Right to Bodily Integrity: Women’s Rights as Human Rights and the International Movement to End Female Genital Mutilation, 1970s-1990s,” in The Human Rights Revolution: An International History, eds. Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde, and William I. Hitchcock (Oxford, 2012); "'I'm Glad I’m Not a Saudi Woman’: The First Gulf War and U.S. Encounters with Saudi Gender Relations” Cambridge Review of International Affairs (2012); and “‘Maybe I Can Marry Them Both’: Conflicted American Views on the Algerian War” in Hindsight (2007). She has also authored articles for Passport and Town Square 49, as well as several book reviews. Dr. Shannon is currently an inaugural Faculty Fellow for FAU's Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Initiative (2014-2016), and is the recipient of several grants and honors, including the Samuel Flagg Bemis Research Grant from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), the SHAFR Summer Institute, and the Marvin Wachman Fellowship in Force and Diplomacy from the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy at Temple University. She is an active member of SHAFR and the Organization of American Historians (OAH), as well as several other scholarly organizations. Dr. Shannon has presented papers at numerous scholarly venues, including the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, the British Academy in London, the New England Historical Association, and the Temple University International History Workshop. Her expertise has been called upon by the media, and she has given many public lectures, including at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum.