Title Associate Professor, History Company UConn Bio Micki McElya received her B.A. in history from Bryn Mawr College in 1994 and a Ph.D. from New York University in 2003. Before joining the faculty of the University of Connecticut, she was an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Alabama (2003-2008). Her book, Clinging to Mammy, won a 2007 Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. She was named a “Top Young Historian” by the History News Network in 2008.  McElya’s areas of specialty include Histories of Women, Gender, Sexuality, and Racial Formation in the United States from the Civil War to the present, with an emphasis on Political Culture and Memory; Cultural History, Feminist & Queer Theories