Skip to main content
Ethnic Studies Department Ethnic Studies
  1. HOME
  2. People
  3. Mary Klann

Mary Klann

Mary Klann has been teaching in San Diego since 2017 at UC San Diego, Miramar College, Cuyamaca College, and Mesa College. She holds an MA in Women’s History from Sarah Lawrence College and a PhD in US History from UC San Diego, where she focused on Native American history and US political history. Her book, Wardship and the Welfare State: Native Americans and the Formation of First-Class Citizenship in Mid-Twentieth-Century America, was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2024. The book connects Native people to larger histories of race, inequality, gender, and welfare in the twentieth-century US and explores how by defending both wardship and their welfare rights, Native people asserted and defined tribal sovereignty. Mary has also published and presented on digital pedagogy, social annotation, ungrading, and creating inclusive classroom communities. She created the open-access resource, Annotate McGirt, which allows students, scholars, and community members to read and analyze the opinion and dissents of the 2020 Supreme Court decision, McGirt v. Oklahoma together. She is passionate about education and cultivating and sharing joy in the classroom. 

Selected Publications

Wardship and the Welfare State: Native Americans and the Formation of First-Class Citizenship in Mid-Twentieth-Century America. University of Nebraska Press, 2024. 
“Frustration, Joy, and Shards of Fact: A Tale of Two I-Search Papers,” American Historical Review (History Unclassified) 128, no. 1 (March 2023): 385-394. 
Co-authored with Logan Gorkov and Rossel-Joyce Garcia, “Sharing Instructional Design: Collaboration and Community with the Past, Present, and Future,” in Designing for Care, edited by Jerod Quinn, Martha Burtis, and Surita Jhangiani, 113-134. (Denver: Hybrid Pedagogy Books, 2022). 
"Native Women’s Challenges to Termination and Relocation Policy, 1944-1971,” Document Project for Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 24, no. 2 (September 2020) Alexander Street Press. 
"Babies in Baskets: Motherhood, Tourism, and American Identity in Indian Baby Shows, 1916-1949," Journal of Women's History 29, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 38-61.