Dr. Sepinwall earned a B.A. in intellectual history and political philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history from Stanford University. Before coming to CSUSM, she was Lucius N. Littauer Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

She teaches courses in comparative world and European history, focusing on intercultural contact, revolutions, colonialism, travel, and the history of ideas.

Her research focuses on late 18th and early 19th-century French, Haitian, Jewish, Atlantic, religious, and gender history. Her recent publications include essays in the journals Annales historiques de la Révolution française, the Revue française d'hístoire d'outremer, and Zion; and in the essay collections The Abbé Grégoire and His World, The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France; and Renewing the Past, Reconfiguring Jewish Culture.

Her book The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism was published by the University of California Press in February 2005.

In 2000, Prof. Sepinwall was selected as one of thirty young scholars to participate in the International Seminar on the Atlantic World at Harvard University. In 2004, she received the President’s Award for Innovation in Teaching at Cal State San Marcos. She is past chair of the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences, and recently completed a three-year term as secretary of the Western Society for French History.

sepinwal@csusm.edu