Department of History

Faculty

E. Wayne Carp
Benson Family Chair in History

E. Wayne Carp received his Ph.D. in U.S. History from the University of California, Berkeley in 1981. In Spring 2008, Professor Carp will visit South Korea as Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer at Yonsei University in Seoul. His teaching interests include American Business and Economic History, American Society and the Vietnam War, American Slavery, Colonial America, and the American Revolutionary Era. He is the author of Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption (1998) and Adoption Politics: Bastard Nation and Ballot Initiative 58 (2004) and the editor of Adoption in America: Historical Perspectives (2002). An internationally recognized expert on legal issues, he has served as a consultant, deponent, and expert witness throughout North America in cases that concern “wrongful adoption,” secrecy in adoption records, and the history of adoption disclosure laws. His current research centers on the life of Jean Paton, and her influence in shaping the U.S. and Canadian adoption reform movements. Information about his most recent publication can be found at: http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/carado.html. For additional information about Professor Carp’s activities, see www.plu.edu/~carpw.

Contact Info: Email: carpw@plu.edu, Phone: (253) 535-7345

Adam Cathcart
Assistant Professor of History

Earned his Ph.D. from Ohio University in 2005 and teaches courses in East Asian history. Cathcart’s published research examines Chinese foreign relations and propaganda in the early Cold War, with an emphasis on Chinese attitudes toward the U.S. occupation of Japan. His ongoing research on Japanese bacteriological war crimes trials and the Korean War stems from the archives of the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs and fieldwork in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Region in northeast China. In 2007, he received a Freeman Foundation ASIANetwork Fellowship for Student-Faculty Research in northeast China. Having studied cello at St.Olaf College, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the Aspen Music Festival, Adam Cathcart is an active performer of music by J.S. Bach, Robert Schumann, and contemporary Chinese composers.

Contact Info: Email: cathcaaj@plu.edu, Phone: (253) 535-7640

Robert P. Ericksen

Kurt Mayer Professor of Holocaust Studies
Professor of History (Chair)

Robert P. Ericksen received his Ph.D. in history in 1980 from the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London. Appointed the Kurt Mayer Professor of Holocaust Studies in 2007, his teaching fields include Holocaust, Modern Germany, Modern Europe, and Western Civilization. He is the author of Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel Hirsch (1985), recently turned into a documentary film which has been shown in 37 PBS television markets (vitalvisuals.com). He also edited Christian Teachings about Jews: National Comparisons in the Shadow of the Holocaust (2003). He co-edited Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust (1999) and A Lutheran Vocation: Philip A. Nordquist and the Study of History at Pacific Lutheran University (2005). Present projects include Complicity in the Killing? German Churches, German Universities and the Holocaust, an expansion of the Kaplan Holocaust Lectures he delivered at Cape Town University in 2004, and a history of Göttingen University during and after the Nazi period. He sits on the Board of Editors of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte and on the Church Relations Committee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Contact Info: Email: ericksrp@plu.edu, Phone: (253) 535-7591

Gina Hames
Assistant Professor of History

Earned her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1996. Her areas of specialization are Latin American History and Global History with particular research interests in Women's history and alcohol studies. She has traveled extensively in Bolivia, Mexico, Cuba, Trinidad, France, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, and Great Britain and is currently working on a book project entitled Alcohol in World History to be published by Routledge Press.

Contact Info:
Email: hamesgl@plu.edu, Phone: (253) 535-7132

Michael Halvorson
Assistant Professor of History

Michael Halvorson received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2001. His teaching interests include European Reformations, Italian Renaissance, Middle Ages, and Western Civilizations. His research is currently focused on Germany during the Late Reformation. In 2007, he was a research fellow at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, where he returned in 2008 as a PLU Regent's Scholar. He is the co-editor of three books: Defining Community in Early Modern Europe (Ashgate, 2008), A Lutheran Vocation: Philip A. Nordquist and the Study of History at Pacific Lutheran University (2005), and Lo-Ha-Ra-No (The Water Spring): Missionary Tales from Madagascar (2003). His current monograph project is Heinrich Heshusius and the Polemics of Early Lutheran Orthodoxy, 1556-1597 (Ashgate, St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History). For additional information about Michael's classes, research, and activities, see www.plu.edu/~halvormj.

Contact Info: Email: halvormj@plu.edu, Phone: (253) 535-8258

Beth Kraig
Professor of History
Chair of Women's Studies (2006-2007)

Received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1987. Beth's strongest interests center on the history of discrimination and oppression (and resistance to those forces) in the United States, and especially in the 20th century. Her research into the subject include examinations of anti-gay ballot measures in the 1970s, racism in the military in World War II, and feminist voices in popular literature in the post-WWII decades. She is actively involved in interdisciplinary programs and fields of study, including Women's Studies and Peace Studies, and has participated in research and projects that center on the importance of historical thinking in interdisciplinary contexts.

Contact Info: Email: kraigbm@plu.edu, Phone: (253) 535-7296

Visiting Faculty

In 2007-2008, the History department is pleased to welcome visiting faculty members James J. Crump (European and World History), Edward D. Richey (American History), and Chad J. Moody (American History).