Faculty
Dr. Cory Conover |
Cory Conover completed his doctorate at the University of Texas, Austin in 2008 specializing in Latin American history. His dissertation analyzed religion and imperialism in the Spanish Empire particularly in the cult of saints and in Catholic liturgy. Dr. Conover has presented his research at major academic conferences like the American Historical Association, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History, and the Latin American Studies Association. His publications include Catholic Saints in Spain’s Atlantic Empire
in Religion and Empire in the Early Modern Atlantic, eds. Susan Juster and Linder Gregerson, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. At Augustana College, Dr. Conover teaches courses on Latin America and Western Civilization. He has lived in several Latin American countries and has traveled through most of the rest. Dr. Conover is also active in the Spanish Speaking Community Association of Sioux Falls.
Dr. Geoffrey Dipple |
Geoffrey Dipple received his Ph.D. in Early Modern European history from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Before joining the faculty at Augustana, he taught at the University of Ottawa, Queen’s University and the University of Toronto. In addition to regularly teaching introductory classes on the history of Western civilization, he also offers courses on the history of the Middle Ages, the Reformation, Hitler and the Holocaust, and on genocide in the twentieth century. His publications include Antifraternalism and Anticlericalism in the German Reformation: Johann Eberlin von Günzburg and the Campaign against the Friars (1996), Radical Reformation Studies: Essays Presented to James M. Stayer, co-edited with Werner O. Packull (1999), and “Just as in the Time of the Apostles:” Uses of History in the Radical Reformation (2005). He is currently working on a book-length translation of German Reformation pamphlets into English and a book on literary and lived utopias during the Protestant Reformation.
Dr. Michael J. Mullin |
Dr. Mullin received his Ph.D. from the University of California—Santa Barbara, where he also served as a lecturer in the history department. Trained as a colonial historian, with a special emphasis on American Indians, he teaches departmental courses in American history until 1877, Revolutionary America, the American Civil War, Western Civilization, and two different courses on American Indian history. His scholarly work has appeared in The American Indian Quarterly, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, and Mid-American Historical Journal. He is currently revising a manuscript concerning the Delaware Indians and Pennsylvania during the Seven Years War. Dr. Mullin received the College’s inaugural Vernon and Mildred Niebuhr Faculty Excellence Award as outstanding teacher at Augustana. In addition to advising history majors, he oversees the College’s Social Studies Teaching Major.
Dr. Matthew Pehl |
Matthew Pehl received his M.A. in History from Utah State University, where he served as the S. George Ellsworth editorial fellow at the Western Historical Quarterly. He earned his Ph.D. in American History from Brandeis University, where he was the recipient of a Crown Fellowship. Professor Pehl specializes in modern U.S. history, with a particular interest in religious, urban, and working-class history. His recent publications include ‘Wherever They Mention His Name’: Ethnic Catholicism on an ‘Industrial Island,’
in Catholicism in the American West: A Rosary of Hidden Voices, ed. Roberto R. Treviño and Richard Francaviglia (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2007; winner of the 2009 Foik Award by the Texas Catholic Historical Society) and The Remaking of the Catholic Working Class: Detroit, 1919-1941,
Religion and American Culture 19, no. 1 (Winter 2009). He is currently preparing a presentation for the 2009 North American Labor and Working-Class History Association, and revising his dissertation for publication.
Dr. Margaret Preston |
Margaret Preston is an Associate Professor of History and received her Ph.D. from Boston College in 1999. She is a social and economic historian who also focuses on issues of gender in modern Ireland, Britain and India. Published in 2004, her book: Charitable Words: Gentlewomen, Social Control and the Language of Charity in Nineteenth-Century Dublin focuses upon the intersections of race, gender, class and social control within the language of charity. She has also published her research in The Historian, Eire-Ireland and New Hibernia Review. A recipient of a 2005 grant from the University of Notre Dame, Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, Preston has also looked at the role of Irish women in the Dakotas. Preston teaches courses on Modern Europe, Ireland, World War I and Western Civilization. She has lived and traveled extensively in Ireland and England and regularly co-teaches a course that takes students to Ireland and England during Augustana's January term. Preston received the ASA 2011-12 Faculty Recognition Award.
Dr. Edward Welch |
Edward Welch earned a J.D. and M.A. in History from the University of South Dakota and received his Ph.D. in American Indian Studies from the University of Arizona in Tucson where he also served two years as the managing editor of Red Ink, a publication highlighting Native American literary and visual arts. Professor Welch specializes in several intersecting areas: History of Native America; South Dakota and Northern Plains history; Historiography and Research Methodology for Native American Studies; and Native American and American Art. Professor Welch is currently working on a number of writing projects concerning the life and art of Oscar Howe (Yanktonai Dakota, 1915-83).
Dr. Robert Wright, who joined the Augustana faculty in the fall of 2009 as the inaugural Nef Family Chair of Political Economy, helps instruct on business, economics, history and government for the College.
Faculty Emeriti
John Bylsma (1969 - 2000)
Endre Gastony (1966 - 1997)
Gary Olson (1968 - 2005)
Lyn Oyos (1957 - 1994)
