Renee Romano

  • Robert S. Danforth Professor of History, Professor of Comparative American Studies and Africana Studies
  • Affiliate of the Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies

Areas of Study

Education

  • PhD, Stanford University, 1996
  • BA, Yale University, 1990

Biography

Renee Romano specializes in modern American history, with research interests in the racial politics of the post-World War II United States, African American history, civil rights, and historical memory.

She is the author or coeditor of five books: 
• Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Postwar America (Harvard University Press, 2003); 
• The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory (University of Georgia Press, 2006); 
• Doing Recent History: On Privacy, Copyright, Video Games, Institutional Review Boards, Activist Scholarship, and History that Talks Back (University of Georgia Press, 2012);
• Racial Reckoning: Prosecuting America's Civil Rights Murders (Harvard University Press, 2014); and
• Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past (Rutgers University Press, 2018).

Committed to the practice of public history, Romano served as the codirector of the traveling exhibit, Courage and Compassion: Our Shared Story of the Japanese American World War II Experience, when it came to Oberlin in 2018. She has been a historical advisor for the Kent State May 4th Walking Tour and Visitor’s Center, the Brooklyn Historical Society, and Radio Diaries.

She has also served on the executive board of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) and is an OAH Distinguished Lecturer.

Romano teaches courses on a wide range of subjects, including the United States in World War II, American historical memory, race and sexuality, the history of whiteness, U.S. foreign policy, public history, history of museums and historical justice.

Notes

Renee Romano quoted in Spanish magazine article written by Sebastiaan Faber

September 24, 2021

Robert S. Danforth Professor of History Renee Romano is quoted at length in a long-form article on the return of "patriotic" history in the United States and Europe, published in the Spanish magazine CTXT. The article is authored by Professor of Hispanic Studies Sebastiaan Faber.

Renee Romano publishes chapter in Heterosexual Histories and gives lectures

March 30, 2021

Renee Romano, the Robert S. Danforth Professor of History and Professor of Comparative American and Africana Studies, published the chapter, “The Strange Career of Interracial Heterosexuality” in the new collection, Heterosexual Histories (New York University Press, 2021), edited by Michele Mitchell and Rebecca Davis. She recently spoke at the Dole Institute at the University of Kansas about the musical Hamilton, and gave the Harrison Lecture at the University of Western Kentucky on the topic, “Can the Past Save Us?: The Role of History in the Struggle for Racial Justice and Multiracial Democracy.”

Renee Romano Quoted

July 2, 2020

Renee Romano, Robert S. Danforth Professor of History and co-editor of the collection, Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Remaking America's Past, was quoted in articles in Time and the Wall Street Journal in advance of the Hamilton film premiere on Disney Plus.
 

Renee Romano Presents on Panel

January 15, 2020

Renee Romano, Robert S. Danforth Professor of History and professor of comparative American studies and Africana studies, presented on the panel, "Historicizing Heterosexuality" at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, held January 3-6, 2020, in New York City. The roundtable featured essays that will be published in the forthcoming volume, Heterosexual Histories. Romano spoke about her contribution to the volume, titled "The Strange Career of Interracial Heterosexuality."

News

Beyond the Writing Center: Abbie Patchen ’24

November 7, 2024

Abbie Patchen ’24 is a Juris Doctor (JD) candidate at the University of North Carolina School of Law. While at Oberlin, Abbie pursued a minor in Writing & Communication, and was involved with the Writing Associates program, where students assist their peers through writing advice and tutoring. Recently, her work was published within the scholarly publishing collaborative WAC Clearinghouse — work that began as an assignment for Teaching and Tutoring Writing Across the Disciplines, taught by Professor of Writing and Communication Laurie Hovell McMillin. Here, she reflects on how her Oberlin courses and professors shaped her approach to learning and writing.

Bearing Witness

September 28, 2023

Adina Langer ’06 and Sheena Ramirez ’06 collaborated on a powerful museum exhibition.

Renee Romano Earns Excellence in Teaching Award

May 18, 2023

A specialist in 20th- and 21st-century American cultural and political history and the field of historical memory, Romano is instrumental in establishing Oberlin's public humanities integrative concentration.

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