Department of History UMBC Links: A-Z Index | myUMBC | Calendar | Computing | Directory | Maps

General Contact Information

Full-Time Faculty | Special Status and Part-time Faculty | Administrative Staff | Center for History Education

Full-Time Faculty   

Rebecca Boehling, Associate Professor (Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Professor Boehling is Director of UMBC's Dresher Center for the Humanities and teaches numerous courses in modern European history, including German history, Judaic Studies and European women's history. She also holds an affiliate appointment in the Gender and Women's Studies Program. Her publications focus on post-World War II Germany and German-American relations. In addition to articles on the U.S. occupation of Germany and German women's history, she is the author of A Question of Priorities: Democratic Reforms and Economic Recovery in Postwar Germany. Professor Boehling been a recipient of numerous fellowships, including Fulbright, German Academic Exchange Service, Volkswagen Foundation Research, and the  Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies fellowships.  She was also awarded the UMBC Provost's Research Award. Her two current research projects are on a history of a German-Jewish family's struggle to be reunited from 1938 to 1948 and a comparative study of British, French and U.S. approaches to denazification in Allied occupied Germany.

Office: 714 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-3720
Email: boehling@umbc.edu | Office Hrs
   

Terry Bouton, Associate Professor (Ph.D. Duke University)

Professor Bouton teaches courses on early America and the era of the American Revolution. He is the author of Taming Democracy: "The People," the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution. Professor Bouton's article, "A Road Closed: Rural Insurgency in Post-Independence Pennsylvania," appeared in the December 2000 issue of the Journal of American History.

Office: 722 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-2056
Email: bouton@umbc.edu | Office Hrs | Homepage
   

Kate Brown, Associate Professor (Ph.D. University of Washington)

Professor Brown studies and teaches Russian and Eastern European History, focusing on ethnicity and nationalism. Professor Brown's article, "Gridded Lives: Why Kazakhstan and Montana are Nearly the Same Place" appeared in the February 2001 issue of American Historical Review. Her book, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland won the American Historical Association's prestigious George Louis Beer Prize, given for outstanding historical writing on any phase of European international history since 1895. Previously Professor Brown's book won the Heldt Prize awarded by the American Women for Slavic Studies. Dr. Brown is the recipient of numerous fellowships including the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Social Science Research Center.

Office: 701 Administration Building

Telephone: 410-455-2961

Email: kbrown@umbc.edu | Office Hrs
   
Amy M. Froide, Associate Professor (Ph.D. Duke University)
Professor Froide holds the Bearman Family Chair in Entrepreneurship for 2007-08. She teaches courses on British history and European Women’s History, especially focusing on the years 1500-1800. She is the co-editor with Judith M. Bennett of Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800 and author of the 2005 book, Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England. Professor Froide also holds an affiliate appointment in Gender and Women's Studies. Dr. Froide is also the recipient on a Huntington research fellowship.
Office: 708 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-2033
Email: froide@umbc.edu | Office Hrs
   

James S. Grubb, Professor (Ph.D. University of Chicago)

Professor Grubb teaches primarily Renaissance and Reformation history. Recipient of several grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he is author of a number of essays and books, including Firstborn of Venice: Vicenza in the Early Renaissance State and Provincial Families in the Renaissance: Private and Public Life in the Veneto, winner of the Marraro prize for the best book in Italian history. He continues his research on social relations in Renaissance Venice. 

Office: 717 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-2091
Email: grubb@umbc.edu | Office Hrs
   

John W. Jeffries, Professor and Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (Ph.D. Yale University)

Dean Jeffries specializes in twentieth-century America and American political and policy history. His distinguished teaching has earned him designation as a UMBC Presidential Teaching Professor.  Professor Jeffries is also a member of the Policy Sciences Graduate Program faculty. He is the author of articles and books on the politics and policy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt era and on the World War II American home front, including Testing the Roosevelt Coalition and Wartime America: The World War II Home Front. He is editor of the 1929-1945 volume of a new Encyclopedia of American History and is currently working on a study of domestic policy making during World War II. Dr. Jeffries is an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer for 2004-2010.

Office: 333 Physics Building
Telephone: 410-455-2385
Email: jeffries@umbc.edu
   

Marjoleine Kars, Associate Professor (Ph.D. Duke University)

Professor Kars is the Acting Director of UMBC's Center for History Education. She teaches courses in early American history, Native American history, American women's history, and Atlantic history. She is the author of Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina. Dr. Kars is currently at work on a book about a massive slave rebellion in the 1760s in the Dutch colony of Berbice. Professor Kars holds an affiliate appointment in the Gender and the Acting Director for the Center for History Education. Professor Marjoleine Kars was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for 2005-06.

Office: 713 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-2032
Email: kars@umbc.edu | Office Hrs | Homepage
   

Kriste Lindenmeyer, Professor and Chair, (Ph.D. University of Cincinnati )
Professor Lindenmeyer's research and teaching focus on U.S. social history with an emphasis on public policy, the history of childhood, and women and gender during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. She is the author of The Greatest Generation Grows Up: American Childhood and Youth in the 1930s, and A Right to Childhood: The U.S. Children's Bureau and Child Welfare, 1912-1946. She is editor of Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Lives: Women in American History, and co-editor with Andrew Kersten for Politics and Progress: American Society and the State since 1865. Professor Lindenmeyer's publications also include chapters in anthologies: “The Federal Government and Child Health” in Children and Youth in Sickness and in Health: A Historical Handbook and Guide and Rebels without a Cause?: Renegotiating the American 1950s. She was Fulbright Senior Scholar at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg for 2004-2005, is a past president of H-Net, and past-president of the Society for the History of Children and Youth. Professor Lindenmeyer holds an affiliate appointment Public Policy and in Gender and Women's Studies. She is the 2007-2010 Kauffman Entrepreneurship Fellow for CAHSS.

Office: 703 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-2047
Email: lindenme@umbc.edu | Office Hrs | Homepage
   

Susan McDonough, Assistant Professor (Ph.D. Yale University)
Professor McDonough teaches courses on medieval history and western civilization.  Her research uses witness testimony from civil court records to explore the relationships between Christians and Jews, men and women, nobles and the middling sort in late medieval Marseille. She is particularly interested in the dynamics of gender and religious interaction in history, and incorporates these themes in her research and courses.   

Office: 709 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-6521
Email: mcdonoug@umbc.edu | Office Hrs
   

Denise Meringolo, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Public History Track in the M.A. in Historical Studies (Ph.D. George Washington University)
Professor Meringolo teaches courses in twentieth century American history and public history. She conducts research in American cultural history, and is especially interested in museums and other public historical institutions. Her work theorizes the relationship between public history and identity formation. Prior to joining the Department of History faculty, Dr. Meringolo worked in numerous public history institutions, including the National Museum of American History, the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington and the Accokeek Foundation at Piscataway Park. She is currently writing a book about the origins of the National Park Service history program during the 1930s.

Office: 731 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-2058
Email: ddm@umbc.edu | Office Hrs
   

Daniel Ritschel, Associate Professor and Director of the Center for History Education (D. of Phil. University of Oxford)

Professor Ritschel teaches a variety of courses on British and European history and is a specialist on the economic and political history of modern Britain. He is author of The Politics of Planning: The Debate on Economic Planning in Britain in the 1930s and is at work on a study of business politics in Britain, 1900-1951. Professor Ritschel has also directed multiple U.S. Department of Education "Teaching American History" grants designed to enhance the teaching of American history in Maryland schools.

Office: 715 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-2034

Email: ritschel@umbc.edu | Office Hrs
   

Anne Sarah Rubin, Associate Professor (Ph.D. University of Virginia)

Professor Rubin joined the UMBC History Department in Fall 2000. Her teaching and research focus on the American Civil War, the U.S. South, and nineteenth century America. Her new book, A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868, winner of the 2006 Avery O. Craven book prize for the best book in Civil War history. The book focuses on Confederate nationalism and identity. She has also worked extensively with electronic media and is co-author of a CD-ROM, The Valley of the Shadow: The Eve of War. This project won the first eLincoln Prize for the best digital project in American Civil War History and The James Harvey Robinson Prize which is awarded biennially for the teaching aid which has made the most outstanding contribution to the teaching and learning of history in any field for public or educational purposes.

Office: 724 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-1661

Email: arubin@umbc.edu  | Office Hrs | Homepage
   
Michelle Scott, Associate Professor (Ph.D. Cornell University)
Professor Scott joined the History Department in Fall 2002. She teaches and studies race and ethnicity in the American experience with emphasis on African American history, black musical culture, and women's studies. Professor Scott has contributed to the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project volumes 2-4 and the forthcoming Columbia Guide to African American History, 1939-Present. Professor Scott's new book, The Realm of a Blues Empress: Blues Culture and Bessie Smith in Black Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1880-1923 will be published in Summer, 2008. Professor Michelle Scott was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty for 2005-2006. Professor Scott is also an affiliate faculty member in Gender and Women's Studies.
Email: mscott@umbc.edu | Office Hrs
   

Joseph N. Tatarewicz, Associate Professor and Director of the Certificate Program in The Human Context of Science and Technology (Ph.D. Indiana University)

Professor Tatarewicz teaches the history of science and technology, policy, and public history. He has done extensive work in public history, including eight years as a Smithsonian museum curator and ten years in private practice. He is the author of Space Technology and Planetary Astronomy and the forthcoming Exploring the Solar System: The Planetary Sciences Since Galileo. 

Office: 702 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-2036
Email: tatarewicz@umbc.edu | Office Hrs | Homepage 
   

Constantine N. Vaporis, Professor (Ph.D. Princeton University)

Professor Vaporis teaches Japanese and East Asian History. He has received numerous fellowships for research in Japanese history including a Fulbright Scholar's Award and an NEH Fellowship for College Teachers. He is the author of Breaking Barriers: Travel and the State in Early Modern Japan and Tour of Duty: Samurai, Military Service in Edo and the Culture of Early Modern Japan (in press). Dr. Vaporis also holds an affiliate appointment in the Gender and Women's Studies Program and is the Graduate Program Director for the Historical Studies Program.
 Office: 723 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-2092
Email: vaporis@umbc.edu | Office Hrs | Homepage
   

Ka-che Yip, Professor (Ph.D. Columbia University)

A specialist in modern Chinese history, Professor Yip teaches courses on Chinese and East Asian history. His distinguished teaching has earned him designation as a UMBC Presidential Teaching Professor. In addition to numerous articles, he is the author of Religion, Nationalism and Chinese Students: the Anti-Christian Movement of 1922-1927, and Health and National Reconstruction in Nationalist China. Professor Yip is interested in the history of medicine, public health and diseases in China. His current projects include book manuscripts on the civilian and military medical systems during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), and the history of public health in Hong Kong.

Office: 712 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-2031
Email: yip@umbc.edu | Office Hrs
   
Emeritus, Special Status, and Part-time Faculty
   
Martin Becker, Instructor (M.A. Vanderbilt University) Martin Becker teaches courses at the college level in European history, Western Civilization, American Politics, and in Religious Studies. He has also worked as a high school social studies teacher. His particular interests include Western Civilization, American History, Political Science, Religious Studies, and Area Studies.
Office: Admin 710
Telephone: 410-455-2312
Email: martinb@umbc.edu
   

John Birkenmeier, Instructor (Ph.D. The Catholic University of America)
Dr. Birkenmeier teaches courses at UMBC in the history of western civilization and the Medieval period. He is the author of The Development of the Komnenian Army, 1081-1180. He has also taught as a visiting lecturer at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. His research interests are in social and religious history during the Medieval period.
Office: Admin 710

Telephone: 410-455-2312
Email: jwbirk@msn.com | Office Hrs
   
  Colin B. Burke, Associate Professor Emeritus (Ph.D. Washington University St. Louis)
Professor Burke has served as a Fulbright Scholar in Poland and as Scholar-in-Residence at the National Security Agency. Author of American Collegiate Populations: A Test of the Traditional View and Information and Secrecy: Vannevar Bush, Ultra, and the Other Memex. Professor Burke is a Research Fellow, Yale University-PONPO and a Garfield Fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. He continues his research and publication on the history of American non-profit organizations and the history of America's intelligence agencies.
   

Warren I. Cohen, Distinguished University Professor, Emeritus (Ph.D. University of Washington)

Professor Cohen teaches American diplomatic history. His principal research interests are in American-East Asian relations. Winner of numerous awards and distinctions for his scholarship, Professor Cohen is the author of 11 books and contributor on several more publications. Some of his most recent books include America's Response to China, Empire Without Tears, America in the Age of Soviet Power, East Asia at the Center and his latest publication, America's Failing Empire: U.S. Foreign Relations Since the Cold War (Blackwell Publishing). Professor Cohen received the University System of  Maryland Regents' Award for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity for 2004-2005.
Office: 725 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-2031
Email: wcohen@umbc.edu
Telephone: 410-455-2045
   
Wilton C. Corkern, Instructor (Ph.D., American Civilization, The George Washington University)
Dr. Corkern is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Accokeek Foundation, Inc. He teaches courses in public history with a special emphasis on heritage tourism and has published widely in the field of public history.
Office: 730 Administration Building
Email: wcorkern@umbc.edu ; wcorkern@accokeek.org
   

Sandra Herbert, Professor, Emeritus (Ph.D. Brandeis University)

Professor Herbert studies and teaches the history of science. A scholar of Charles Darwin, she has won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation. Professor Herbert has edited The Red Notebook of Charles Darwin and Charles Darwin's Notebooks, 1836-1844. Her most recent book is Charles Darwin: Geologist which has won numerous awards, including the Geological Society of America's 2006 Mary C. Rabbitt Award, “given annually in recognition of outstanding contributions to the understanding of the history of the geological sciences in the United States and abroad.” The book is also the winner of the 2006 Suzanne J. Levinson book award from the History of Science Society, the George L. Mosse Prize from the American Historical Association given for an outstanding work on European history, and the Albion Book Prize from the North American Conference on British Studies. Professor Herbert is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Office: 726 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-2049
Email: herbert@umbc.edu | Office Hrs
   

Michael T. Johnson, Instructor (Ph.D. Stony Brook University)
Michael Johnson earned his M. A. in Historical Studies from UMBC in 1992. He then went to Stony Brook University on Long Island and earned a Ph.D. in United States History. While at Stony Brook he was awarded a Chandler Fellowship from Harvard. His dissertation involved race and ideology in antebellum Baltimore. His other main subject area expertise is labor history. Michael is currently working on a study of African American health care in Baltimore from 1870 through 1930.
Office: 710 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-2312
Email: mijohnso@umbc.edu | Office Hrs
   

Barry Lanman, Director of the Martha Ross Center for Oral History and Adjunct Professor of the Practice (Ed.D. Temple University)
Dr. Lanman is a specialist in oral history and teaches courses in the UMBC Public History Track and conducts oral history research projects.   Concurrently, he is the past-director of the Consortium of Oral History Educators, historian for the Distinguished Flying Cross Society, serves as an oral history consultant/interviewer.  He also works with the Center for History Education on several Teaching American History Grants.  Dr. Lanman is the author of Maryland Aloft   A Celebration of Aviators, Airfields and Aerospace  (co-authors: Edmund Preston and Jack Breihan), Maryland Historical Trust Press, 2003, Oral History in Secondary Education, Oral History Pamphlet Series, Oral History Association, Los Angeles, California, 1989.   His most recent publications are: Preparing the Next Generation of Oral Historians:   An Anthology of Oral History Education, AltaMira Press, 2006 (co-Authored with Dr. Laura M. Wendling) and Halethorpe Heritage:  A Story of a Maryland Community, Halethorpe Heritage Committee, 2006.  In conjunction with the Discovery Channel, he wrote the educational component for the television series The Promised Land.  The Former Members of Congress named Dr. Lanman as its educator-historian for 1984.  He has also received the Judith Ruchkin Research Award and the Forrest Pogue History Award.
Office: 705 Administration Building

Telephone: 410-455-2312

Voice Mail: 410-747-1257
Email: Oralhistory@comcast.net | Office Hrs
   

Clayton D. Laurie, Adjunct Associate Professor (Ph.D. The American University).
Dr. Laurie teaches military and intelligence history, and Western Civilization to and since 1700. A public historian with the U.S. Government for over twenty-two years, he has served as a staff historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, the CIA History Staff, and as deputy and chief historian at the National Reconnaissance Office. He is currently on the history staff of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence – the headquarters of the U.S. Intelligence Community. He is the author of The Propaganda Warriors: The American Crusade Against Nazi Germany, The Roles of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1877-1945, and Industrialists in Olive Drab: The Emergency Operation of Private Industrial Facilities by the War Department During World War II. He has published numerous articles on nineteenth and twentieth century military and intelligence history, specializing in World Wars I and II, the Vietnam War, history of the CIA and the National Reconnaissance Office, with an emphasis military affairs and the role of intelligence in U.S. military and foreign policy.
Email: clalauri@umbc.edu  Office Hrs
   
 

Linda Lear, Senior Research Scholar (Ph.D. George Washington University)

Dr. Lear is a historian of science who has earned special recognition for her work in environmental history and Rachel Carson. Dr. Lear has served as Research Professor of Environmental History at George Washington University, as Research Collaborator for the Office of Smithsonian Institution Archives, and as a consultant to Public Broadcasting Service's "American Experience." Her publications include Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature and Lost Woods the Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson. Her latest book is entitled Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature and is the basis for the new movie, "Mrs. Potter," starring Renee Zellweger.
Email: ljlear@prodigy.net
   
 

Aristeides Papadakis, Professor Emeritus (Ph.D. Fordham University)

Professor Papadakis is a scholar of Byzantine, medieval, and religious history. He is author of Crisis in Byzantium and The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy 1071-1453. French Translation: L'orient chrétien et l'essor de la papauté [éditions du cerf, 2001]. He has also been editorial consultant and contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium and is preparing a history of early Byzantine monasticism. 
Email: papadaki@umbc.edu
    
James L. Scott, Instructor HIST 102, (M.A. Historical Studies, UMBC)
Mr. Scott is a Ph.D. Student in UMBC's Public Policy program (policy History track). His dissertation will address the role of the Congress in
shaping the emergency shipbuilding program during World War II. He is a retired lobbyist who also teaches POLI 324, The Congress, and POLI 327,
Interest Groups and Lobbyists, in UMBC's Political Science department.
Email: jscott8@umbc.edu
   
Howard Smead, Adjunct Associate Professor (Ph.D. University of Maryland, College Park)
Dr. Smead is the author of several books on the black civil rights movement in the United States., including Blood Justice: The Lynching of Mack Charles Parker. He teaches courses in twentieth-century American social history and the civil rights movement.
Email: hsmead@wam.umd.edu | Homepage | Office Hrs
   
  Robert K. Webb, Professor Emeritus (Ph.D. Columbia University)
Professor Webb, a scholar of Nineteenth century British social history, is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and has served as the editor of the American Historical Review and the AAUP Bulletin.  He is the author of The British Working Class Reader, 1790-1848; Harriet Martineau, A Radical Victorian; Modern England; and coauthor of Modern Europe.  He maintains his connection with the Department through sponsorship of the Robert K Webb Lecture, offered annually.
   
G. Rickey Welch, Affiliate Professor in History and Professor of Biology (Ph.D., Biology, University of Tennessee)
Dr. Welch’s research interests focus on the history of science and on theoretical biophysics. He teaches courses in the Human Context of Science and Technology program and Biology. His work lies at the interface between the physical and biological sciences and has dealt with a number of emergent theoretical ideas and historical personages.  Dr. Welch’s current interest concerns the impact of the physical “field” concept in the development of modern biology.  His research work has been supported by fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Wellcome Trust.  Dr. Welch was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1995, in recognition of his work in the theory and history of science.  He served as Dean of Arts & Sciences at UMBC during the period 1996-2005.
Office: 721 Administration Building
Email: welch@umbc.edu | Office Hrs
   
Victor Wexler, Associate Professor of History
Dr. Wexler was a fulltime faculty member in UMBC's Department of History for many years. His interests and publications focus on European Intellectual history, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. He offers courses in the the Summer and Winter sessions as well as at the Universities of the Maryland System Shady Grove campus. Dr. Wexler is the author of David Hume: Historian, published by the American Philosophical Society, and of a seminal article on Rousseau's anti-feminism which appeared in the American Historical Review.  He served as an Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences for ten years prior to his retirement in 2006.
Email: wexler@umbc.edu
   
John D. Willard V, Instructor and Associate Director, Martha Ross Center for Oral History (M.A. UMBC)
John Willard is the Associate Director of the Martha Ross Center for Oral History and specializes in oral history theory and methods.  He has taught Western Civilization survey courses as well as Public History Track classes for the Department of History, Honors College, and Humanities Center at UMBC.His research interests include general religious studies, early Christian church formation, contemporary issues of faith, the Cold War, the Pan-Islamic movement, formation of democratic institution, democratic responses to communist states, and industrial/technology development of the 19th and early-20th centuries.  Currently he is conducting research to expand on his M.A. thesis regarding the first women ordained in the Episcopal Church as well as working on an oral history book that profiles the immigrant experience since the closing of Ellis Island. He is also working as the editor of a collection of articles and essays on democratic rights
and responsibilities.
 Office: 705 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-2312
Email: jdwillard@umbc.edu
   
CHE
Center for History Education		  

Rachel Brubaker earned her M.A. in Historical Studies at UMBC. She has been the Director of Program Administration for the UMBC Center for History Education since 2002. She has managed five Teaching American History Program grants with area school systems, which have provided professional development activities for over 300 K-12 history teachers. Ms. Brubaker previously served as director of the Maryland History Day program and coordinator of inter-institutional collaborations at the Yale Gordon College of Liberal Arts at the University of Baltimore. She was also an education marketing specialist at Maryland Public Television.
Office: 707 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-2312
Email: rbruba1@umbc.edu
 
Jeremy Spahr has a B.S.E. from Millersville University and earned his M.A. in Historical Studies at UMBC. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Policy at UMBC with a concentration in the History Policy Track, focusing on the politics of civil-military relations and the changing nature of the US military.  He started work on his dissertation which will examine the rise of Blackwater and other private security firms in the context of the privatization movement within the U.S. government.  He is Program Coordinator for the Center for History Education.
Office: 706 Administration Building
Telephone: 410-455-2312
Email: jeremy3@umbc.edu