Alvita Akiboh

Alvita Akiboh (pronunciation) is a US historian specializing in the history of US overseas colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific. She earned her Ph.D. in History from Northwestern University and B.A. in History from Indiana University. Before coming to Yale, Akiboh was a postdoctoral fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows.

Akiboh’s first book, Imperial Material: National Symbols in the US Colonial Empire, is available for pre-order and comes out October 2023 with University of Chicago Press. Imperial Material tells the story of how objects laden with US national symbols—flags, money, and postage stamps—became an arena in which contests over national identity played out in the US colonial empire from the turn of the twentieth century to the post-WWII era of global decolonization. In these overseas colonies occupying the tenuous space between foreign and domestic, these seemingly mundane objects became central for both US imperialists who sought to establish and maintain US colonial rule and for people living in the colonies who made claims to belonging, resisted US rule, and used these symbolic objects to articulate their own understanding of their relationship to the United States.

Akiboh has conducted research throughout the continental United States and the overseas territories, including American Samoa, Guam, Hawai‘i, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. Her work has been supported by a variety of organizations, including the American Historical Association, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the Smithsonian National Postal Museum and National Museum of American History.

At Yale, Akiboh teaches courses on US history, national identity, colonialism, and empire. Please check courses.yale.edu for current offerings.