History Department

Education

• Ph.D. and M.A. Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, 1993
• B.A., French Literature, San Francisco State University, 1982

About

Sally McKee received her doctorate in 1993 at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. Trained as a medievalist, she now focuses on African- and European-Americans’ engagement with intellectual and cultural movements of the second half of the 19th and early 20th century. Her teaching introduces students to the convergence of cultures in the history of politics, art, religion, and food. She is active in UC Davis’s efforts to enhance the diversity and inclusion of its students and faculty.

Research Focus

My research has ranged across centuries. Originally a medievalist with a specialty in late medieval Venetian colonization, I now concentrate on the cultural history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with an emphasis on jazz, modernism, and "primitivism." My book, The Exile's Song: Edmond Dédé and the Unfinished Revolutions of the Atlantic World (Yale, 2017), presents new archival material relating to Edmond Dédé, the African American composer from New Orleans, whose opera, Morgiane, ou le sultan d'Ispahan, will be presented in concert in New Orleans in Fall 2024, and then in New York and Washington, D.C. in early 2025, by Opera Crèole (NOLA) and Opera Lafayette (Washington, D.C.).

Publications

• McKee, S., The Exile’s Song” Édmond Dédé and the Unfinished Revolutions of the Atlantic World, Yale University Press, 2017.
• Kidner, Bucur, Mathisen, McKee, Weeks (2018) The Global West: Connections & Identities, Volume 1 to 1790, Third Edition, Cengage.
• McKee, S. (2014) “The familiarity of slaves in medieval and early modern households,” in Mediterranean Slavery Revisited (500-1800), Juliane Schiel and Stefan Hanss (Eds.) Zurich: Chronos
• McKee, S. (2008) “Domestic slavery in Renaissance Italy,” Slavery and Abolition 29/3 (2008), 1-21.
• McKee, S. (2004) “Inherited status and slavery in Renaissance Italy and Venetian Crete,” Past & Present 182.

Teaching

Professor McKee teaches HIS 12, The World History of Food (with Professor André Reséndez) in Winter Quarter and HIS 4A, Western Civilization in the Fall Quarter.

Awards

• Co-winner, the 2004 Berkshire Conference for Women Historians Article Prize for “Inherited Status and Slavery in Renaissance Italy and Venetian Crete,” Past & Present 182 (February, 2004).