TAHPDX: Project Historians
Dr. Craig Wollner
Associate Dean and Professor of Public Administration, College of Urban and Public Affairs, Portland State University. Dr. Wollner has published several books about industrialization and labor history including Electrifying Eden, a book about the electrification of the Pacific Northwest, and The City Builders, the history of the carpenters’ union. In addition to content-based instruction, he teaches historiography in the TAH courses. Dr. Wollner also serves as a project co-director. Contact
Dr. David Peterson del Mar
Professor of History, Portland State University/University of Oregon/Oregon State University. Most recently, Dr. del Mar has written a history of the state of Oregon, Oregon’s Promise. Dr. del Mar is the instructor of record for the TAH graduate-level history courses. He brings his in-depth knowledge of early U.S. history and the history of the Pacific Northwest to the project. Contact
Dr. Carl Abbott
Professor of Urban Studies/History, Portland State University. Dr. Abbott is a nationally recognized Urban Historian who has written seminal books about Portland and its development. Dr. Abbott serves as an historian consultant to the project and guides the historical research processes relating to his areas of expertise. Contact
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GUEST HISTORIANS
| Dr. Alan McPherson, University of Oklahoma. Dr. McPherson is currently an associate professor in the School of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of Yankee No! Anti-Americanism in US-Latin American Relations and Intimate Ties, Bitter Struggles: The United States and Latin America since 1945. Dr McPherson uses multinational sources to survey and analyze the history of US-Latin American relations that are often marred by ideological conflict, imbalances of power, and economic disparity. Dr. McPherson explored the topic of the Monroe Doctrine and how it has affected U.S. diplomacy in Latin America. | Dr. Matt Lassiter, University of Michigan. Dr. Lassiter is an associate professor in the History Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author of The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South and co-edited The End of Southern History in addition to writing many book chapters and journal articles dealing with racial discrimination and other civil rights issues. Dr. Lassiter examines crucial battles over racial integration, court-ordered busing, and housing segregation to explain how the South moved from the era of Jim Crow fully into the mainstream of national currents. He presented on the topic of School Integration: The Crisis at Little Rock, Arkansas. |
| Dr. Ellen Bassett, Portland State University. Dr. Bassett is an assistant professor in the College of Urban and Public Affairs at Portland State University. Her research interests include land use planning, urban redevelopment, social equity, and community decision-making. She is particularly interested in understanding how different communities deal with policies, regulations, and property rights to manage land use. Her recent project involved investigating the impact of the recent wave of regulatory takings initiatives on planning practice at the local government level. Dr. Bassett presented on the topic of Kelo v. New London: Eminent Domain, Property Rights & the Public Interest. |
Dr. Jeff Ostler, University of Oregon. Dr. Ostler is a Professor of History at the University of Oregon. He works on Native American history and has published widely on 19th century political history, especially in the area of agrarian radicalism. Ostler’s 2004 book, The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee, won the Caughley Western History Association prize for the best book of 2004 in Western U.S. History. His research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Oregon Humanities Center. Dr. Ostler explored issues of Native American displacement for the Louisiana Purchase topic. |
| Dr. William G. Robbins, Oregon State University. Dr. Robbins has spent more than half his life living and working in Oregon. He joined the faculty at Oregon State University in 1971, where he taught courses in Pacific Northwest history until his retirement in 2002. He has authored and edited eleven books, most recently Landscapes of Conflict: The Oregon Story, 1940-2000 (2004) and Oregon, This Storied Land (2005). Dr. Robbin's presentation explored the topic of Claiming the Land and the ways in which land was acquired, developed, and altered in the mid-19th century. | Dr. Glenn May, University of Oregon. Dr. May specializes in Southeast Asian history, the history of U.S. foreign relations, and Chicano history. After receiving a Ph.D. from Yale in 1971, Dr. May joined the University of Oregon in 1983. He has written extensively on Philippine history and historiography, the Philippine-American War and on U.S. expansionism and colonial rule. Dr. May's presentation related to the topic of the United States Becomes a Pacific Nation, and covered the debate over why the U.S. acquired overseas territories and about the strength of the subsequent Filipino resistance to the Americans. |
| Dr. Gregory Black, University of Missouri, Kansas City. Dr. Black specializes in the history of Hollywood film and has published a variety of books and articles on film propaganda and censorship including The Catholic Crusades against the Movies, 1940-1975 and Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda shaped World War II Movies. Dr. Black presented on the topic of World War II: The Home Front. Drawing on his writings about Hollywood and the War, Dr. Black explored the role of movies in fostering patriotism and in shaping public perceptions, combining film, politics, history, and the bond between art and society. | Dr. Richard Fried, University of Illinois, Chicago. Dr. Fried has been at the University of Illinois at Chicago since 1972. He focuses, in writing and teaching, on recent U.S. history, primarily on political history and political culture and has written extensively on the McCarthy Era, American anti-communism and the Cold War throughout the 20th century. Dr. Fried presented on the topic of The Great Fear: Balancing Freedom against Security in the McCarthy Era. Dr. Fried explored McCarthyism and Cold War Pageantry, focusing on local efforts to instill anti-communism and efforts to gear Americans up for a higher level of cold-war citizenship. |
| Dr. Thomas Biolsi, University of California, Berkeley. A Professor of Native American Studies, Tom Biolsi is an anthropologist by training. His scholarly interests are primarily in the areas of tribal governments, Indian-White relations, and Indian law and policy. His publications include Organizing the Lakota: The Political Economy of the New Deal on Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations and Deadliest Enemies: Law and the Making of Race Relations on and off the Rosebud Reservation. Dr. Biolsi's presentation spoke to the topic of Enlarging Citizenship and the complex issue of Native American sovereignty. | Dr. Robert Buzzanco, University of Houston. A Professor of History, Robert Buzzanco is one of the nation’s leading authorities on the Vietnam War. He is the author or editor of three books and has written more than twenty articles that have appeared in scholarly publications and major newspapers. His current manuscript is on culture and politics for Oxford’s VSI series and he is continuing work on the political economy of the 1960s and the impact of the Vietnam War on the U.S. economy. Dr. Buzzanco's presentation related to the topic of the Vietnam Conflict: The Domestic Front. |
| Dr. JoAnn E. Argersinger, Southern Illinois University. A professor of History, JoAnn Argersinger taught at Dickinson College and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County before joining Southern Illinois University in 1998. A recipient of Rockefeller and NEH Fellowships, Argersinger is the author of Toward a New Deal in Baltimore and Making the Amalgamated: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Baltimore Clothing Industry, 1899-1939. She is a co-author of The American Journey 4th Edition and the author of two forthcoming works: The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire: A Brief History with Documents and Women at Work. Dr. Argersinger's presentation addressed the topic of The Great Depression and the New Deal looking in particular at how the period affected women and other disenfranchised groups. | Dr. H.W. Brands, University of Texas. Dr. Brands has taught in many forums including K-12, community college and at the university level as well as a stint as an oral historian. He is currently the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History at the University of Texas. He has written and coauthored numerous books and his articles have appeared in many popular newspapers and journals receiving critical and popular acclaim. The First American was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Prize, as well as a New York Times bestseller. The Age of Gold was a Washington Post Best Book of 2002 and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Andrew Jackson was a Chicago Tribune Best Book of 2005 and a Washington Post bestseller. Dr Brands' presentation addressed the topic of Boundaries of the Nation. |
| Dr. Bruce Levine, University of California, Santa Cruz. Author of Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves During the Civil War, Dr. Levine's topic explored Free Soil and Slavery Expansion and the competition between North and South for control of the newly-created territories and states during the period between the Revolutionary and the Civil War. [download powerpoint presentation] | Dr. Mark Spence, Historian. Editor of Lewis and Clark: Legacies, Memories, and New Perspectives, Dr. Spence specializes in early U.S. history and American expansionism. He explored Thomas Jefferson and the “Purposes of Commerce” which looked at the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition in light of Thomas Jefferson’s political and economic vision for America. [download powerpoint presentation] |
| Dr. Elizabeth Jameson, University of Calgary. Dr. Jameson is the author of All That Glitters: Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek and The Women's West and Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West. Dr. Jameson's topic explored Industrial Workers in the West and how industrialization affected work, family, and community in the early American West. In particular, Dr. Jameson examined the roots of the West's renowned labor radicalism and stereotypes of western labor. | Dr. Adam Rome, Penn State University. Dr. Rome discussed the Rise of the Modern Environmental Movement focusing on the relationship between the extraordinary growth of the U. S. economy after World War II and how it created the impetus for the surge in conservation activism. Special attention was given to the issue of suburban sprawl, which was a catalyst for environmental activism in Oregon as well as around the nation. |
