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Affiliated Faculty

Dana Frank
  • Pronouns she/her/hers
  • Title
    • Research Professor and Professor Emerita
  • Division Humanities Division
  • Department
    • History Department
  • Email
  • Website
  • Office Location
    • Humanities Building 1, HAS. Room 215
  • Office Hours Retired, no office hours
  • Mail Stop Humanities Academic Services
  • Mailing Address
    • 1156 High Street
    • Santa Cruz CA 95064
  • Faculty Areas of Expertise Labor and Social Movements, Social Justice, US History

Summary of Expertise

 U.S. Labor and Working-Class History; Women and Social Movements in the U.S.; Race and Ethnicity in the U.S; The Great Depression; Human Rights and US Policy in Modern Honduras

Research Interests

Labor, gender, and race in modern US history. Human Rights and U.S. Policy in Post-Coup Honduras;
Current Research:  Working people's activism during the Great Depression.

Biography, Education and Training

M.A., Ph.D. Yale University
B.A. University of California, Santa Cruz

Honors, Awards and Grants

Selected Grants and Fellowships:
--Appleton Foundation Grant, 2019.
--National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers/Fellowship for College Teachers, 2011-12, 1996-97, 1990-91
--University of California President's Research Fellowship in the Humanities, 2011-12
--UC Mexus Small Grant, University of California, 2010
--Travel Grant, New York University Center for the U.S. and the Cold War, 2009
--Labor Studies Grant, Miguel Contreras Labor Studies Fund, University of California, for the Center for Labor Studies, 2008-09 ($90,000) 2007-08, $85,000
--Faculty Research Grant, University of California Labor and Employment Research Fund, 2008-09 ($30,000), 2007-08 ($20,000)
--Institute for Humanities Research, Humanities Research Fellowship, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2011,2004
--Albert Beveridge Grant, American Historical Association, 1986
--John D. Rockefeller 3rd Fellowship, Program on Non-Profit Organizations, Yale University, 1986
--Woodrow Wilson Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in Women's Studies, 1984
--Yale University Prize Teaching Fellowship for Excellence in Teaching, 1983-84
--Yale University Graduate Fellowship, 1980-84
--Danforth Graduate Fellowship, 1980-84

Honors and Prizes:

--Shortlisted, Juan E. Mendez Award for Human Rights in Latin America, Duke University Press, 2019--Finalist, Foreward Magazine Indie Award

--Founders' Award, Reel Work May Day Labor Film Festival, Santa Cruz, California, 2008
--Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics, University of Oregon, Spring Quarter, 2001
--Excellence in Teaching Prize, Academic Senate Committee on Teaching, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2001
--Book of the Year Award, International Labor History Association, 1999
--W. Turrentine Jackson Prize for best first book, Western History Association, 1996
--George Washington Eggleston Prize for Best Dissertation in U.S. History, Yale University, 1988

Selected Publications

  • Books:
  • What Can We Learn From the Great Depression? Stories of Ordinary People and Collective Action in Hard Times, forthcoming, Beacon Press, September 2024.
  •  La Larga Noche Hondureña: Resistencia, Terror, y EEUU Tras el Golpe de Estado, translation by Janeth Blanco, Editorial Guaymuras, 2022.
  • The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup, Haymarket Books, 2018.Women Strikers Occupy Chain Store, Win Big: The 1937 Detroit Woolworth's Strike, reprint of essay in Three Strikes, with a new interview with the author and introduction by Todd Chretien, Haymarket Books, 2012.
  • Local Girl Makes History: Exploring Northern California's Kitsch Monuments, City Lights Books, 2007 
  • El Poder de la Mujeres es Poder Sindical: La Transformación de los Sindicatos Bananeros de America Latina, Spanish Edition of Bananeras, translated by Janeth Blanco, Editorial Guaymuras, Honduras, 2006.
  • Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America, South End Press, 2005.
  • Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labor's Last Century, with Howard Zinn and Robin D.G. Kelley, Beacon Press, 2001
  • Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism, Beacon Press, 1999 
  • Purchasing Power: Consumer Organizing, Gender, and the Seattle Labor Movement, 1919-1929, Cambridge University Press, 1994

Selected Presentations

  • Public Testimony, California State Assembly, on immigration of undocumented, unaccompanied minors from Central America, August 19, 2014.
  • Public Testimony, Tom Lantos Human Right Commission, United States Congress House of Representatives, on human rights in Honduras, July 25, 2013.
  • Public Testimony, Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Developmen, House of Commons, Parliament of Canada, May 9, 2013, on human rights in Honduras.