Our Newest Faculty

This September, Martha McNamara joins UMass Amherst as associate professor of history, faculty in the Public History Program, and associate director of the Slavery North Initiative. 

A cultural historian of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century New England, McNamara specializes in visual and material culture and the history of slavery and its enduring legacies. She comes to UMass by way of Boston University, where she earned her MA and PhD in American studies; the University of Maine, where she was associate professor of history; and Wellesley College, where she served as director of the New England Arts and Architecture Program from 2007–25. The recipient of numerous awards, fellowships, and grants, McNamara is the author of From Tavern to Courthouse: Architecture and Ritual in American Law, 1658–1860 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). She is co-editor of two volumes: New Views of New England: Studies in Material and Visual Culture, 1680–1830 (Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2012) and Amateur Movie Making: Aesthetics of the Everyday in New England Film, 1915–1960 (Indiana University Press, 2017). 

McNamara is an active public historian who works with a variety of non-profit cultural organizations to promote a critical understanding of the past as a way to make sense of the present. Reflecting on the importance of public history initiatives like Slavery North, McNamara remarks: “Understanding the past with all its hardships, triumphs, nuances, and contradictions is vital to making sense—and making change—in our present. We need to communicate those past lived experiences to the broadest possible public by engaging and inspiring people.”

Currently, McNamara is working on two scholarly projects: a monograph on the life and work of African artist Pedro Tovookan Parris and his experience with slavery and freedom in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world; and another scholarly book on late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century New England landscapes.

This fall, Hannah Pollin-Galay joins the UMass Amherst as the director of the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies (IHGMS), and the Pen Tishkach Chair of Holocaust Studies in the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies and the Department of History. Pen tishkach—Hebrew for “lest you forget”—is the guiding principle behind the anonymously endowed professorship. 

Pollin-Galay comes to UMass Amherst from Tel Aviv University, where she served as head of the Jona Goldrich Institute for Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture since 2020. Her interdisciplinary scholarship focuses on East European Jewish Holocaust experiences, integrating both history and literature. 

“At a time of increased Holocaust denialism, authoritarianism, as well as mass atrocities around the world, the work of the IHGMS is more critical than ever,” Pollin-Galay says. “Inspired by the achievements of Professor James Young and Professor Alon Confino, I am committed to leading programs that stimulate rigorous scholarship, curiosity, creativity and public dialogue. My goal is to make the Institute a source of light, using education to build a more informed and compassionate public square.”

Pollin-Galay’s first book, Ecologies of Witnessing: Language, Place and Holocaust Testimony (Yale University Press, 2018), investigates how language and geopolitical context inform the memories of individual Lithuanian Holocaust survivors. Her second book, Occupied Words: What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024), won the National Jewish Book Award in the category of Holocaust. 

She is currently working on a project exploring the fraught connections between Jews and non-human nature, with a focus on the Holocaust era. For the 2024–25 academic year, she served as a senior scholar at the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimony at Yale University and a translation fellow at the National Yiddish Book Center.

Adapted from an article published by the College of Humanities and Fine Arts