Academics - History Faculty & Staff

Sabrina Thomas is an Associate Professor of History at Wabash College. Her research specializes in U.S. foreign policy with a transnational focus on the intersections of race, gender, nation, and war through the legacies of mixed-race children born from international conflict.

Her most recent book, Scars of War: The Politics of Paternity and Responsibility for the Amerasians of Vietnam (University of Nebraska Press, 2021), explores ideas of race, nation, and gender in the aftermath of the Vietnam War through an examination of why U.S. policymakers failed to grant the Amerasians of Vietnam – the children of American fathers and Vietnamese women – U.S. citizenship. Scars of War was nominated for the Bancroft Book Prize.

In 2021, Thomas received a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Research Grant to begin her second book project, The Soul of Blood and Borders: Brown Babies, Black Amerasians and the African American Response. The Soul of Blood considers the disparate response of African Americans to the German brown babies – children born to African American servicemen and German women after the Second World War – and the Black Amerasians – the progeny of African American servicemen and Vietnamese women born as a result of the Vietnam War. Her first article on this topic, “When War Creates Life,” will appear in The Cambridge History of War and Society in America (2023).

Thomas’ course offerings reflect her transnational approach to U.S. history, as “Black Germany,” “Bloods: The African American Experience in Vietnam,” “Sports, War, and Masculinity,” “Lessons and Legacies of War: Remembering the Vietnam War,” which included an immersion experience in Vietnam, and “Vietnam War Stories: Introduction to Oral History,” strengthened the breadth and depth of the departmental curriculum. Other offerings such as “Race, Class, Gender and Punishment: A History of Mass Incarceration in America,” “Malcolm, Martin, and Mandela,” and “The History and Politics of Hip Hop” brought an analytical and creative approach to topics central to the modern American experience.

Prior to joining the Wabash history department, Thomas earned a dissertation completion fellowship at Middle Tennessee State University, was a teaching fellow at Arizona State University (ASU), and an adjunct lecturer at Arapahoe Community College in Colorado. She earned her bachelor’s degree in history from Colorado State University, master's in counseling from Butler University, and Ph.D. in U.S. History from ASU. 

Thomas is an active scholar and has presented at over 20 conferences. Additionally, she has earned 11 grants or fellowships in her career, including a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Research Grant in 2021, and an Elmer L. Anderson Research Scholarship from the University of Minnesota in 2021-22. Thomas is a member of several professional associations and serves as Board Member of the Tim Lai Foundation for Amerasians.