Office: Harris Hall 127

Email: Kevin Barksdale

Phone: 304-696-2956

KEVIN BARKSDALE (Ph.D. West Virginia), an assistant professor of American history, is a specialist in Appalachian and West Virginia history. He has extensive teaching experience in Appalachian history and culture, Native American Studies, and Coalfield/Working Class history. His research interests include the 18th century Appalachian backcountry, southeastern Amerindian history, and the trans-Appalachian borderlands. He is the author of The Lost State of Franklin: America's First Secession (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2008).

Office: Harris Hall 128

Email: Daniel Holbrook

Phone: 304-696-2417

DANIEL HOLBROOK (Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon) Chair, is an associate professor of history.   He specializes in the history of Technology, and teaches in that field as well as in Public, Local,  U.S. and World History. His publications include "The Nature, Sources, and Consequences of Firm Differences in the Early History of the Semiconductor Industry" and "Complementarity, Cooperation, and Collective Innovation: Materials Research in the Semiconductor Industry.”  His current research focuses on the development of contamination control technologies; "Controlling Contamination: The Origins of Clean Room Technology” is recently published in  History and Technology.

Office: Harris Hall 105

Email: Montserrat Miller

Phone: 304-696-2723
 

MONTSERRAT MILLER (Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon) is an associate professor of history specializing in modern Europe.  Her research concentrates on the social history of Catalonia, on small commerce, food, and on gender and consumerism.  She is currently working on a book entitled Feeding Barcelona: Market Halls, Social Networks and Consumer Culture, 1714-1975. 

Office: Harris Hall 109

Email:  David Mills

Phone: 304-696-2725

DAVID E. MILLS (Ph.D., Utah) Director of Graduate Studies, is an associate professor specializing in the modern Middle East. His research interests include twentieth century economic history of the Nile valley and nationalist theory. Currently, he is working on a book entitled “Dividing the Nile”:  The Failures of Egyptian Nationalism, 1918-1953.

Office: Harris Hall 114

Email: William Palmer

Phone: 304-696-2720

WILLIAM G. PALMER (Ph.D., University of Maine) specializes in early modern (1400-1800) British, Irish, Atlantic, and European history, as well as historiography.  He is the author of The Political Career of Oliver St. John; The Problem of Ireland in Tudor Foreign Policy; Engagement with the Past: The Lives and Works of the World War II Generation of Historians; From Gentleman’s Club to Professional Body: The Evolution of  the History Department in the United States, 1940-1980, and over twenty articles in such journals as the Journal of British Studies; Albion; The Historian; The Renaissance Quarterly; and the Journal of the Historical Society. He is currently at work on a study of historical constructions of morality and virtue.

Office: Harris Hall 108

Email: Greta Rensenbrink

Phone: 304-696-2955

GRETA RENSENBRINK (Ph.D., Chicago), an assistant professor of American history, has expertise in Modern US Social and Cultural history. Her areas of specialization include nineteenth-century US intellectual, social, and cultural, as well as social theory. She has presented her research at numerous conferences and is completing a manuscript on lesbian activists in Second Wave Feminism; her article “Parthenogenesis: Regenerating Women’s Community through Virgin Birth,” is forthcoming from the Journal of the History of Sexuality.

Office: Harris Hall 129

Email: Phillip Rutherford

Phone: 304-696-2719

Office: Harris Hall 124

Email: Robert Sawrey

Phone: 304-696-3347

ROBERT SAWREY (Ph.D., Cincinnati) is a professor of American History, with a research interest in the era of Reconstruction. He is the author of Dubious Victory (University Press of Kentucky, 1992) and an essay on George Hunt Pendleton in Warren Van Tine, ed., Builders of Ohio (Ohio State University Press, 2004). He is now working on a study, The Coach and the College,  which deals with the connection between a coach, his successful athletic programs and the financial survival of a small liberal arts college in North Dakota. In his spare time, he enjoys watching and discussing movies and playing golf.

Office: Harris Hall 110

Email: Donna Spindel

Phone: 304-696-2717

DONNA J. SPINDEL (Ph.D., Duke) (Interim Chair, English) is a professor of early American history with a specialty in legal history. She has written articles for such journals as the Journal of Southern History, the North Carolina Historical Review, and the American Journal of Legal History. She is the author of Crime and Society in North Carolina, 1663-1776 (Louisiana State, 1989).

Office: Harris Hall 112

Email: Christopher White

Phone: 304-696-2722

CHRISTOPHER  M. WHITE  (Ph.D., Kansas) is an assistant professor of Latin American history. He teaches courses on Latin America, the developing world, and U.S. foreign relations and he is the author of Creating a Third World: Mexico, Cuba, and the United States during the Castro Era (New Mexico, 2007), as well as the just-published The History of El Salvador (Greenwood, 2008).

Office: Harris Hall 107

Email: Kat Williams

Phone: 304-696-2959 

KAT WILLIAMS (Ph.D., Kentucky) is an associate professor of American history and Director of Women’s Studies.  Her areas of specialization include, U.S. women’s history and the history of sport. She is the author of several articles including “Women’s Baseball and Beyond: Life After the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.” Her book, Life After the League: The Real Impact of Playing in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, is near completion.