Dr. Matthew Sutton, associate professor of history, will present an Honors Distinguished Faculty/Humanities Fellowship lecture in October.
“Wild Bill’s Army of Faith: Religion and American Espionage in World War II”
Tuesday, October 27
5:30 p.m.
Goertzen 21 (GCAD 21).
From its crucial role in the Manhattan Project through the present-day focus on environmental cleanup and lingering health effects, the history of the Tri Cities is fundamental to major historical questions regarding national security, urban planning, the American West, science and technology, the environment, and other topics.
Through contract with the US Department of Energy and donations from community partners, the Hanford History Project is developing an archive and museum from major collections of never-before-seen documents and unique artifacts. Current priorities include digitizing our collection of oral histories and connecting them to relevant researchers. Student interns are hard are work cataloging the archival collections we have received from the Department of Energy, after which we will turn towards developing finding aids and making the collections accessible to scholars.
Eventually, we hope to establish a museum and archival reading room near (or at) the planned visitor center for the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, of which Hanford represents one-third (along with Los Alamos and Oak Ridge). This will help in bringing local residents and tourists into these historical conversations.
The program consists of at least 30 credit hours beyond the bachelor’s degree, distributed as follows:
Up to 9 related graduate credits can be taken outside history. Related courses are offered in anthropology (archaeology), agricultural economics, architecture, business administration, communication, economics, geography, English, environmental science, forestry and range management, interior design, law, political science, and sociology.
The program consists of at least 72 credit hours beyond the bachelor’s degree, distributed as follows:
The World/Comparative Field provides spatial and temporal context to complement Primary and General Fields and to provide research and teaching breadth. The World/Comparative field must be different from the Primary and General Fields.
List of Field of Study Faculty
All PhD students, except those who take World History as their General Field, must take 9 credits of graduate courses to fulfill the requirements of World/Comparative Field as their complementary field. The World/Comparative Field will have dual purposes of (1) providing opportunities that allow students to learn and explore global and comparative perspectives of students’ research subjects, and (2) offering credible training in world history as a teaching field. All students are required to take 570, 571, and one more field course (either 571, a graduate field course outside their General Field, or a 400 or 500-level course outside History). They must pass all three courses with the minimum grade of B+. No preliminary examination is required for the World/Comparative Field.
Up to 12 related graduate credits can be taken outside history (see related courses above).
Another primary field can be substituted for American history if circumstances so warrant. For example, a candidate might be interested in obtaining a curatorship at a history museum in London, England. A logical primary field would be modern European history with perhaps a secondary field in U.S. history, depending on the scope of the museum. Any change from the primary field in American history or selection of a non-history secondary field, for instance anthropology, must be approved by the departmental public history committee.
A supervised internship is an integral part of the public history track. It affords students the opportunity to work as temporary employees, and it provides them with firsthand experience (in some cases compensated) in settings such as archives, museums, historical societies, or federal agencies. Students at WSU have been interns at local, state, regional, and national sites, including local historical societies, the Washington State Historical Society, the Idaho State Historic Preservation Office, the Nevada State Parks System, the National Archives–Central Plains Region, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the U.S. Forest Service, the Historic American Engineering Record, and numerous private research firms or agencies. Most, though not all, travel to off-campus locations to serve internships. Summer internships are common. Students who enroll in 10 hours of History 598 (Internship) will have spent a full semester as on-site interns.
Internships provide students with practical insights into potential historical employment. Private sector or institutional supervisors provide mentoring relationships, and they introduce students to the professional networks common to the public historian’s work environment.
Students are expected to identify an appropriate internship at least one semester prior to beginning the internship. During that semester, the student will organize an I-1 meeting and present to the committee a draft Memorandum of Understanding that describes in detail the work to be performed, the time and credit involved, the compensation (if any), and the obligations of all parties—the student, the faculty advisor, and the internship supervisor. The major professor will write a brief memo to the director of graduate studies indicating that a successful I-1 has been held.
Academic credit can be earned by registering for History 598, Internship. For each semester hour of credit, the student works 50 hours. At some point in their program all students must register for at least 3 hours of internship credit.
Students must have a major professor to be admitted to the Ph.D. program. Because of the internship and the interdisciplinary emphasis of the public history track, it is imperative that the student draw up a degree program and choose the members of an advisory committee by the end of the second semester.
The major professor must be a member of the graduate history faculty who has fields and/or skills related to one or more of the following: the primary field, the coordinate primary field, or the area of specialization.
The advisory committee will comprise the major professor (chairperson) and a minimum of 2 other faculty members, one of whom may be from another department representing the student’s interdisciplinary concentration.
A supervised internship is an integral part of the public history track. It affords students the opportunity to work as temporary employees, and it provides them with firsthand experience (in some cases compensated) in settings such as archives, museums, historical societies, and private historical research firms.
Students at WSU have been interns at local, state, regional, and national sites, including local historical societies, the National Park Service, the National Archives–Central Plains Region and Pacific Northwest Region, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the U.S. Forest Service, the Historic American Engineering Record, the National Parks Conservation Association, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Experience Music Project in Bellevue, Washington, the Nevada State Parks System, as well as numerous private research firms or agencies. Most, though not all, travel to off-campus locations to serve internships.
Academic credit may be earned by registering for History 598: Internship. For each semester of credit, the student works 40 hours. Summer internships are common, but several students have enrolled in History 598: Internship for a full semester as on-site interns. At some point in their program all students must register for 3 hours of internship credit.
Internships provide students with practical insights into potential historical employment. Private sector institutional supervisors provide mentoring relationships, and they introduce students to the professional networks common to the public historian’s work environment.
For each internship, a contract or Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is drawn up that describes in detail the work to be performed, the time and credit involved, the compensation (if any), and the obligation of all parties: the student, the faculty advisor, and the internship supervisor.
| Public History Track Faculty Member | |
|---|---|
| Robert Bauman (Tri-Cities Campus) American history and public history | rbauman@tricity.wsu.edu |
| Marlene Gaynair Modern US, US Race and Ethnicity, Atlantic World, and Caribbean History | marlene.gaynair@wsu.edu |
| Robert McCoy Public history | rmccoy@wsu.edu |
| Laurie Mercier (Vancouver Campus) United States, the American West, the Pacific Northwest, immigration and migration, and American labor | lmercier@vancouver.wsu.edu |
| Sue Peabody (Vancouver Campus) Early modern Europe, Atlantic and Indian Ocean, world slavery and race, History in Media and Popular Culture | speabody@wsu.edu |
Modern historians recognize that their discipline can play a vital role outside the classroom. Public history draws on the basic skills and methods of history and applies them to a wider audience. Their skills are used in the interpretation, preservation, and management of historical resources. In addition, public historians are engaged in such diverse activities as museum and archival administration, historic preservation, and research for government or corporate clients.
In the fall of 1979, the Department of History first offered M.A. and Ph.D. tracks in public history. Since then approximately 75 students have completed the program. Several found professional employment with a variety of local and state historical societies, state historical agencies, public and private archives and libraries, and numerous federal agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, and the U.S. Forest Service. Others have found work with private research firms, which undertake contracted research and historical report preparation.
Specific graduate courses offer introductory background and training in public history. In addition, the program stresses “real-world” application and practical connections in private sector and institutional agencies that utilize historical techniques and methodologies. Internships, additional course work (including workshops, seminars, and short courses), and the thesis/dissertation offer further training. Areas of specialization include archives, business and corporate history, cultural resource management, historic preservation, litigation support, museum studies, and public policy.
A supervised internship is an integral part of the public history track. It affords students the opportunity to work as temporary employees, and it provides them with firsthand experience (in some cases compensated) in settings such as archives, museums, or historical societies. Internships provide students with practical insights into historical employment. Private sector or institutional supervisors provide mentoring relationships, and they introduce students to the professional networks common to the public historian’s work environment.
The main campus is in Pullman, a town of 24,000 residents located in the Palouse country of southeastern Washington. Together with the University of Idaho, 8 miles to the east in Moscow, the Pullman area provides an increasingly diverse population with a center of cultural and intellectual life, and thus combines many of the advantages of an urban community with the character and amenities of a small town. Hiking, camping, fishing, skiing, boating, and other outdoor recreational activities are easily accessible at the Snake River parks and at the mountain and lake regions of Washington and northern Idaho.
No. Several of WSU’s graduate students have gone on to teach history in the academy.
Washington State University is well known for its friendly learning environment and extensive use of educational technology. According to Yahoo Internet Life’s annual report on “America’s Top 100 Wired Colleges 2000,” Washington State University ranked #9 in the nation, and #1 in both the West and the Pac-10. Forbes magazine lists WSU as one of the top 20 cyber-universities in America for its use of technology in distance education. In all, WSU reaches students in 45 states and 16 countries around the globe. In the year 2000, WSU was one of 29 research institutions in the United States designated Internet2 members by President Clinton. Finally, WSU ranks in the top 100 colleges for its research library system and for the computer access and Internet connections, among some 2,000 colleges and universities nationwide.
Secondary Education Teaching Certificate, Washington State University, 2009
M.A. University of Washington, 1991
Theresa received an M.A. in history from the University of Washington in 1991. She taught at Idaho State University from 1992 through 2001 and began teaching at WSU in 2001. Her primary interests include Secondary Teacher Education, World History, European Medieval History and Roman History.
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1987
Professor Kale teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in 19th-century Europe, modern France, and postwar Europe. His research focuses on modern French history, where much of his work addresses the various strains of conservative ideology along with the intellectual, social, and politics life of 19th-century elites.
Professor Kale is the author of Legitimism and the Reconstruction of French Society, 1852–1883 (Louisiana State University Press, 1992) and French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability from the Old Regime to the Revolution of 1848 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). He has published articles in such journals as French Historical Studies, French History, the Journal of Women’s History, Historical Reflections, and Modern Intellectual History. He is currently working on a book entitled Elusive Traditions: French Pan-European Encounters and the History of Ideas (1800-1900), which explores how nineteenth-century liberal and conservative social thought in France developed partly through transnational encounters.
Professor and Columbia Chair in the History of the American West
VMMC 102M
360-546-9719
boag@wsu.edu
Ph.D., University of Oregon, 1988
Professor Boag’s teaching and research interests focus on society and culture in the U.S. (1850-1950), the Pacific Northwest, and the American West.
Professor Boag is currently working on two projects—a biography of the early Pacific Northwest landscape painter, William Samuel Parrott (1844-1915), and a study of his own ancestors’ story in the context of world history. He is the author of four books, Environment and Experience: Settlement Culture in Nineteenth-Century Oregon (University of California Press, 1992), Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest (University of California Press, 2003), Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past (University of California Press, 2011), and Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon (University of Washington Press, 2022). He has also written articles, essays, and book chapters on the history of gender, sexuality, the environment, and culture in the American West and the Pacific Northwest.
Honorary Lifetime Membership Award, Western History Association, 2022
Leadership in History Award, American Association of State and Local History, for “Crossing Boundaries: Portraits of a Transgender West,” Washington State History Museum exhibition, 2022
Ray Allen Billington Prize, Best Book in American Frontier History, Organization of American Historians, 2013
Over the Rainbow Books Commendation, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table, American Library Association, 2013
Fulbright German Distinguished Chair, 2012-2013
Lambda Literary Award, Finalist, Transgender Nonfiction, 2012
Armitage-Jameson Book Prize, Coalition for Western Women’s History, honorable mention, 2012
Audre Lorde Prize, Committee on Lesbian and Gay History, honorable mention, 2006
Joan Jensen-Darlis Miller Prize, Coalition for Western Women’s History, honorable mention, 2006
Joel Palmer Award, Best article, Oregon Historical Quarterly, 2001, 2005
Oscar O. Winter Prize, Best article in the Western Historical Quarterly, 2006
Associate Professor of History
Graduate Studies Director
Wilson-Short Hall 323
509-335-7298
lawrence.hatter@wsu.edu
Ph.D. University of Virginia, 2011.
Dr. Hatter is a diplomatic and legal historian of the early United States and Canada.
Dr. Hatter’s research speaks to questions of nationality, sovereignty, and Indigenous rights on the Canada-US border from 1783 to the present.
His book, Citizens of Convenience: The Imperial Origins of American Nationhood on the U.S.-Canadian Border (Charlottesville & London, 2017), won the 2016 Walker Cowan Memorial Prize for an “outstanding work of scholarship in eighteenth-century studies” and was named a 2017 Choice “outstanding academic title” by the American Library Association.
His current research project, in consultation with the Mohawk community of Akwesasne, is a history of the legal case Mitchell v. M.N.R. He uses this twenty-year legal battle between the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne and the Canadian government to interrogate the role that history and historians play in Indigenous rights on the Canada-US border.
Citizens of Convenience: The Imperial Origins of American Nationhood on the U.S.-Canadian Border. Charlottesville & London: University of Virginia Press, 2017.
“Taking Exception to Exceptionalism: Geopolitics and the Founding of an American Empire.” Journal of the Early Republic, 43 (Winter 2014): 653-60.
“The Jay Charter: Rethinking the American National State in the West, 1796-1819.” Diplomatic History, 37 (September 2013): 693-726.
“The Narcissism of Petty Differences? Thomas Jefferson, John Graves Simcoe and the Reformation of Empire in the early United States and British-Canada.” American Review of Canadian Studies, 42 (June 2012): 130-41.
Dr. Hatter has written editorials for The Washington Post, The Oregonian, The Spokesman Review, and The Grand Forks Herald.
He is also a regular columnist for The Inlander, a free weekly newspaper published in Spokane and circulated throughout the inland northwest.
“George Washington (didn’t) sleep here: Quoting the founders in the 21st century”
“Becoming Citizens of Convenience on the U.S.-Canadian Border with Lawrence B. A. Hatter”
