Ella Taranto graduated cum laude from Pomona College in 2015 with a Bachelor of Arts in History and English. In her undergraduate thesis, Ella examined the identity crisis faced by black and white Marylanders during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Using personal letters and diaries, Freedman's Bureau records, and fiction contemporary to the period, Ella explored the ways that Maryland's geographic location affected its residents' experiences and memories of the war. Ella has spent the last two years teaching middle school English and History in Los Angeles, CA.
Ella is interested in issues regarding regional identity, national myths, and foreign policy and influence. Specifically, she studies the influence of the American South on the United States' interactions with the Atlantic World in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
