History Faculty

Chair
Michael Guenther
Associate Professor

Department chair of Science, Medicine, and Society

Mike Guenther began teaching at Grinnell College in 2007, having received his B.A. from the University of Virginia, and his M.A. & Ph.D from Northwestern University. A historian of science, technology and the environment, he is currently finishing a book project (tentatively entitled, Science and...
Brown
Professor Emeritus
Professor Brown has been a member of the Grinnell History Department since the fall of 1989. She has chaired the History Department and the Gender and Women's Studies concentration, been an active participant in the Center for Prairie Studies, and served as chair of the Social Studies Division...
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Instructor
Xiao Chen (He/Him) joins the History Department of Grinnell College as a faculty member in Fall 2023. His dissertation, “Punishment, Frontier, and Ethnicity in the Making of the Qing Empire (1636-1912)”, have charted the rise of a new convict labor regime engaged in categorizing, exploiting, and...
Catherine
Assistant Professor
Catherine Chou is a historian of early modern European political theory and culture. At heart, her work is concerned with dueling visions of the 'common wealth' and ideal society, and the ways in which men and women living in an age of religious conflict and dynastic uncertainty tried to make these...
Edward
Professor
Edward Cohn is a scholar of Soviet and Eastern European history, with a specialty in the history of policing, surveillance, and the often-blurry line between public and private life in the Communist world. A 1999 graduate of Swarthmore College, he worked for a year as a political journalist and came...
Monessa
Associate Professor
Monessa Cummins received her Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Cincinnati. Her research focuses on Greek epinician poetry, a type of lyric poetry composed in praise of victors at ancient athletic games. In particular she studies this poetry within its historical and archaeological context. In...
Caleb head shot—smiling
Professor

Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

I am a Professor of History and Religious Studies at Grinnell College, where I am also Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. I graduated from Vassar College with a degree in political science, an education that still informs my work and my life. I have a...
Carolyn smiling
Associate Professor
Carolyn Herbst Lewis is Associate Professor of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies and History. She joined the faculty at Grinnell College in 2013. Professor Lewis is a specialist in the fields of American women’s history and the histories of sex, sexuality, and medicine in the United States...
Andrew
Professor Emeritus
Before joining the Grinnell faculty in 1978, Andrew Hsieh received his education at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Kyoto University (Japan), and Yale University. He has currently entered Senior Faculty Status. He taught Chinese and Japanese history classes at the college, and also held...
Daniel
Professor Emeritus
Kaiser has taught at Grinnell since 1979, and in 2008, entered senior faculty status. A specialist in medieval and early modern Russia, Mr. Kaiser has studied legal, social, and demographic history. He is the author of The Growth of the Law in Medieval Russia (Princeton University Press, 1980), and...
Paul
Associate Professor
Assistant Professor Albert Lacson teaches courses that focus on race and ethnicity in US history, including Native American and African American history, race in early America, comparative slavery, and European-Indian relations in colonial North America. In his research, he seeks to illuminate the...
Kelly
Associate Professor
Kelly Maynard joined the faculty at Grinnell in 2009 after teaching in the history and art history departments at Scripps College. Her current project, entitled Hearing Wagner in France at the Fin-de-Siècle: Music and the Interior World, is an interdisciplinary monograph building upon her doctoral...
Elizabeth Prevost
Professor
Elizabeth Prevost, Frederick L. Baumann Professor of History, is a historian of modern Britain and the Empire/Commonwealth; colonial Africa; global Christianity; women and gender; and reading, publishing, and literary celebrity. She is the author of The Communion of Women: Missions and Gender in...
Sarah Purcell
Professor

L.F. Parker Professor of History

Sarah Purcell, L.F. Parker Professor of History, graduated from Grinnell with a B.A. in history in 1992. She went on to earn an A.M. (1993) and a Ph.D. (1997) from Brown University. She joined the faculty of Grinnell in 2000 after teaching at Central Michigan University. Ms. Purcell's research...
Elias
Assistant Professor
Elias G. Saba received his PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania in 2017. He was awarded the British Association of Islamic Studies – De Gruyter Prize in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World 2018 for his dissertation. His first monograph, Harmonizing...
Jose
Associate Professor
Mr. Silva came to Grinnell from the University of Chicago where he wrote a dissertation on Chilean middle-class unions. Mr. Silva's work examines how the middle class contributed to the rise of powerful leftist parties in Chile. These research interests show up in the courses he teaches on U.S...
smith
Professor Emeritus
D. A. Smith has taught history at Grinnell since 1970; during the 1960s he studied and taught history at Yale University. He has also been (1993 and 1997) Concurrent Professor of History in Nanjing University, China. His scholarly and teaching interests focus upon nineteenth-century British...

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