Chair: Dr. Dan Holbrook
Director of Graduate Studies : Dr. Chris White
Phi Alpha Theta Faculty Advisor: Dr. David Trowbridge
Marshall University’s Department of History features a distinguished faculty with diverse backgrounds and interests. Our faculty are active members of the Marshall community and publish regularly with leading scholarly presses and journals. They are also the proud recipients of multiple university-wide teaching awards. Specific teaching/scholarship areas include US History, European, Asian, Middle Eastern, British, African-American, Latin American, History of Technology, and Public History.
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).�
ROBERT DEAL (Ph.D. Temple University), is an assistant professor of American history, specializing in legal and environmental history. His research has focused on the laws and customs of the American Whaling industry in the 18th and 19th centuries. He recently published an article entitled “Fast-Fish, Loose-Fish: How Whalemen, Lawyers, and Judges Created the British Property Law of Whaling” in Ecology Law Quarterly.
Office: Harris Hall 116
Email: Robert Deal
Phone: 304-696-2721
Home Page: Robert Deal
LAURA MICHELE DIENER (Ph.D., Ohio State),), is an assistant professor of medieval history. Her teaching interests include textile and fashion history, Abelard and Heloise, Hildegard von Bingen, medieval mysticism and spirituality, Vikings and the Norse world, ancient Greece and Rome, and medieval Britain. Her article “Enter the Bedchamber of Your Soul’: Advice for Nuns at Prayer,” appears in Pastoral Care in the Middle Ages , Ed. Ronald J. Stansbury, Companions to the Christian Tradition Series, Brill Press, and another article, “The Anonymous Heroine: Aelred of Rievaulx and His Rule for Women,” is forthcoming. She is currently working on several projects in which she explores the spiritual implications of medieval textile production.
Office: Harris Hall 115
Email: Laura Michele Diener
Phone: 304-696-2954
Home Page: Laura Michele Diener
DANIEL HOLBROOK (Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon) Department 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 128
Email: Daniel Holbrook
Phone: 304-696-2417
Home Page: Daniel Holbrook
MONTSERRAT MILLER (Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon) is a 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 105
Email: Montserrat Miller
Phone: 304-696-2723
Home Page: Montserrat Miller
DAVID E. MILLS (Ph.D., Utah), is a 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 113
Email: David Mills
Phone: 304-696-2725
Home Page: David Mills
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, for which a preliminary sketch has appeared in Historical Journal 52, 4(December, 2004).
Office: Harris Hall 114
Email: William Palmer
Phone: 304-696-2720
Home Page: William Palmer
GRETA RENSENBRINK (Ph.D., Chicago), an associate 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 recently published in the Journal of the History of Sexuality. She is also Director of the Womens’ Studies Program at Marshall University.
Office: Harris Hall 108
Email: Greta Rensenbrink
Phone: 304-696-2955
Home Page: Greta Rensenbrink
PHILLIP T. RUTHERFORD (Ph.D., Penn State) is an associate professor of history specializing in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany and Central Europe. He teaches courses in modern European history, propaganda and film, Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and World War II. He is the author of Prelude to the Final Solution: The Nazi Program for Deporting Ethnic Poles, 1939-1941 (The University Press of Kansas, 2007). His current research project, entitled Fighting Fare: American Servicemen and the Taste of War, 1941-1945, explores food, foraging, and the American Serviceman during the Second World War.
Office: Harris Hall 129
Email: Phillip Rutherford
Phone: 304-696-2719
Home Page: Phillip Rutherford
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 124
Email: Robert Sawrey
Phone: 304-696-3347
Home Page: Robert Sawrey
ANARA TABYSHALIEVA (Ph.D., Kyrgyz National University) is an assistant professor of Asian history. She teaches courses in modern and pre-modern Asian history, South and Central Asia, East Asia, Modern China, and Modern Japan. Her research projects have been supported by the John D. and Catherine T. Mac Arthur Foundation, the UNESCO Hirayama Silk Road Program (France), the US Institute of Peace, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the United Nation Development Program (UNDP). She has been a scholar in residence at United Nations University in Japan and at the Centre for the Study of Islam and Muslim-Christian Relations, University of Birmingham (UK). She has authored several books and numerous chapters, articles, and reports on history, international relations, development, and gender issues. Dr. Tabyshalieva served as co-editor of the UNESCO volume History of Civilizations of Central Asia: Towards the Contemporary Period: From the Mid-nineteenth to the End of the Twentieth Century” (Paris, 2005). She is also the author of the UNESCO report on human security in Central/South Asia (Paris, 2007).
Office: Harris Hall 111
Email: Anara Tabyshalieva
Phone: 304-696-2724
Home Page: Anara Tabyshalieva
DAVID TROWBRIDGE (Ph.D., Kansas) is an assistant professor of African American history. He teaches courses on civil rights, African American history, the history of sport, as well as general courses in United States history. He has published several articles in leading academic journals, including the Journal of African American History. His current projects include a book entitled Jim Crow in the Land of John Brown, that explores the origins of racial segregation in the Midwest, and a second book on African American migration from the South at the end of Reconstruction.
Office: Harris Hall 111
Email: David Trowbridge
Phone: 304-696-2717
Home Page: David Trowbridge
CHRISTOPHER M. WHITE (Ph.D., Kansas), is an associate professor of Latin American history and Director of Graduate Studies. 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 History of El Salvador (Greenwood, 2008).
Office: Harris Hall 112
Email: Christopher White
Phone: 304-696-2722
Home Page: Christopher White
KAT WILLIAMS (Ph.D., Kentucky) is an associate professor of American history. 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.
Office: Harris Hall 107
Email: Kat Williams
Phone: 304-696-2959
Home Page: Kat Williams
TERESA BAILEY (Administrative Secretary, Sr.) Ms. Bailey is a life long resident of Huntington, WV. She has been employed by the university for twenty-two years and with the History Department for seventeen years. She specializes in the administrative needs and happiness of faculty and students.
Office: Harris Hall 109
Email: Terry Bailey
Phone: 304-696-6780
Home Page: Teresa Bailey
Emeritus Faculty
FRANK S. RIDDEL (Ph.D., Ohio State) is anemeritus professor of history who continues to teach online courses for the department. His areas of specialization include the history of Spain and West Virginia history. He is the author of several articles on the history of Spain during the dictatorship of Franco, the editor of an anthology entitled Appalachia: Its People, Heritage and Problems and coauthor of West Virginia Government and American Government: The USA and West Virginia. His most recent publication is The Historical Atlas of West Virginia (West Virginia University Press, 2008).
Email: Frank S. Riddel
DR. DAVID R. WOODWARD (Ph.D., Georgia) a member of the history department for thirty-six years, taught military history, Russian history and Modern European history. He is the author of eight books and numerous articles in journals such as the Journal of Modern History and the Historical Journal. His book Hell in the Holy Land (published in the United Kingdom by Tempus as Forgotten Soldiers of the First World War) was adopted by both the History Book Club and the Military History Book Club. Woodward, who was a consultant for a BBC program on David Lloyd George, contributed an article on the Middle East during World War I to the BBC history web site. Since his retirement in 2006, Woodward has written two books: America and World War I: A Selected Annotated Bibliography of English-Language Sources (Routledge, 2007) and World War I Almanac (FactsOnFile, 2009).
Email: David R. Woodward