Her current project is a wide-ranging study of commercial cinema in colonial and postcolonial Tanzania. Dr. Fair’s first book was Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community and Identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890–1945 (Ohio University Press, 2001), which was nominated for the Herskovits Prize from the African Studies Association. In 2013, Fair published Historia ya Jamii ya Zanzibar na Nyimbo za Siti binti Saad (A Social History of Zanzibar and the Songs of Siti binti Saad) in Kiswahili, and the book has been warmly received in East Africa. Dr. Fair has published in a wide range of journals, including a recent piece in the American Historical Review. Laura was a member of the Department of History at the University of Oregon from 1994 to 2007, and was a founding member of the Women and Gender in Africa and the African Diaspora RIG.