Raymond Rast, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Department of History

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Teaching interests: U.S. History Since 1877, History of the American West, Public History/Historic Preservation, U.S. Urban History, Racial/Ethnic History, American Cultural History

Research interests: Tourism in the American West, San Francisco, Western Literature, Cesar Chavez and the Farmworker Movement, Orange County History

Brief biography: A native of Independence, Missouri, I earned the B.A. in History from Yale University in 1995. After brief stints at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, and the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, I entered the M.A. program at the University of New Mexico. In 1998, I moved into the Ph.D. program at the University of Washington. During my years in Seattle, I pursued my interests in Western American history, urban history, cultural history, and tourism. I finished my dissertation, "Tourist Town: Tourism and the Emergence of Modern San Francisco, 1869-1915," and earned my doctorate in 2006. I also worked on historic preservation projects for the National Park Service related to Japanese American internment during WWII and Cesar Chavez and the Farmworker Movement. During the 2006-07 academic year I was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the College of Wooster. I joined the History Department at CSUF in 2007