Jessica Barbata Jackson is an associate professor of history, specializing in immigration history, race and citizenship studies, Italian American studies and social studies education.

Her first book, “Dixie’s Italians: Sicilians, Race, and Citizenship in the Jim Crow Gulf South” looks at the racial experience of Sicilians in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama at the turn-of-the-century. It was a co-winner for the Italian American Studies Association Best Book Award in 2020.

Her new book project is a history of immigrants and anti-immigrant lynching violence in Colorado, specifically recovering the experiences and legacies of Italian and Mexican immigrants from the 1890s to the 1920s. She’s also working on History Matters, a grant-funded education, outreach and engagement endeavor that will co-create culturally responsive, hyperlocal, place-based history curriculum for local P-12 classrooms.

Jackson oversees CSU’s Social Studies Teaching (SST) undergraduate concentration. She teaches courses in social studies education as well as immigration, civil rights and women’s history and the history of race.