Professor Bill McCoy led a group of students on a travel and archiving course to Swaziland, Africa, during the months of May and June, 2010.  The group saw the sights, learned about the culture of Swaziland, and helped preserve valuable archival materials that are at risk of disappearing to the elements.

McCoy sent us much-appreciated dispatches about the trip, which proved to be as enlightening and educational as it was eye-opening for all who went.

McCoy wrote from Raleigh Fitkin Memorial Hospital on May 26: “It's just a little after 9:00 a.m. here, and we're getting ready to start another day of work on our archiving project here at the hospital.  I just dropped off four of our students this morning to go on rounds with Dr. Paulos, the Ethiopian doctor on staff here who works on the pediatrics ward and coordinates visits for international students. 

“We've been having a really wonderful time here; the staff at RFMH have been very generous as our hosts and allowed the students to get a wide ranging view of the medical work being done here; I know they will be anxious to tell you all about it when they return.  As a group, we've been working very hard on the archiving project, though it has become clear that we certainly won't be ‘finished’ with it once we leave.  We will, however, have helped the hospital clear some additional space, and in a hospital with serious overcrowding issues, I think we all feel good about that.  And, besides, not "finishing" leaves the door open for a return visit!”

“Thank you all for your prayers; they have sustained us well.  We've had some upset tummies and a few scraped knees, but otherwise kept in good health and very good spirits.  I thank God every morning for the wonderful attitudes of the people on this trip, and the joy they show in learning and loving in Christ's name.”

McCoy reported on June 5: “This week we have spent a day with the Luke Commission mobile clinic ministry, a day with the church's HIV/AIDS task force, visiting the homes of people with HIV, and another day painting a rural clinic and nurses' residence. Tomorrow we have church at Ndzingini, where Harmon Schmelzebach established the first mission of the Nazarene church 100 years ago this December.  And soon, home again for almost all of us.”

"Our final days together in Swaziland were rich ones," wrote McCoy.  "Worship on Sunday at Endzingini was followed by a profound time of prayer together at Prayer Rock, where Harmon Schmelzenbach and other pioneer missionaries of the Church of the Nazarene used to go for solitude. Monday was a day of fun—shopping and swimming as we enjoyed each other's company one last time.”

McCoy, his wife Erin, and their two children are staying in Swaziland for the fall semester while McCoy finishes up research on his dissertation.  Plans are underway for future trips to Africa and elsewhere.   So, stay tuned.


The Patriot Ledger published a full-page story on a History Department class project: “Josiah Quincy House comes to life on Eastern Nazarene College class website.”

As part of Prof Stephens’ course Critical Readings in History students helped create an extensive resource site for the historic home.  (Click image for full story.)

“Professor Randall Stephens' class at Eastern Nazarene College studied the Josiah Quincy House in Wollaston,” wrote Jack Encarnacao in the Patriot Ledger, “one of the city’s lower-key but significant historic sites. The home was built in 1770 by Revolutionary War colonel Josiah Quincy, son of Col. John Quincy, after whom the city is named.”

“The fruit of the class’s research – skimmed from Library of Congress archives, journals and maps – is on display at a Web site the students created: enc.edu/history/jq.”

“Stephens said he was pleasantly surprised at how evocative the house was to students, and the extent to which they were motivated to dig for nuggets of interesting Quincy history. Much of the historical information about the house comes from Eliza Susan Quincy, who in the 1880s kept journals, inventoried the contents of the house and commissioned photographs of its interior. She wrote about how Josiah Quincy had stood on the residence’s roof to monitor troop movements in Boston Harbor early in the American Revolution.”

Not long after this article appeared in the Ledger, the paper published a follow-up item on the spike in visitors to the Josiah Quincy House.

The class also paid a visit to the Congregational Library in downtown Boston.  There, the library’s director Peggy Bendroth gave students and Prof Stephens a guided tour of the 150-year-old library’s extraordinary collections. In addition to that, two superb American historians--Chris Beneke (Bentley University) and Maura Jane Farrelly (Brandeis University)--visited the class on separate occasions and spoke with students about the field of history, research, and the writing process.

Class trips and visits from esteemed scholars are a fundamental part of the History Department’s curriculum.  In the Spring Professor Bill McCoy led students in his 20th Century Genocide course on a trip to the Armenian Library and Museum in Watertown and also took them to a memorial service for victims of the holocaust.  McCoy also led a travel and research course to Swaziland in Africa (see piece above).



The department is exceedingly proud of the accomplishments of current students and accomplished alumni.  At the spring 2010 Senior Banquet the department recognized a number of students for outstanding achievement. 

Johnathan Atwater received the 2010 Charles Todd Caldwell Memorial Scholarship. Sgt. Caldwell was a History major in the ENC Class of 1989. He served in the 115th Military Police Company of the Rhode Island National Guard. On September 1, 2003, he was killed by a roadside mine south of Baghdad, Iraq.

Caldwell's family and friends set up a scholarship in his honor, and it is awarded to a deserving upper-class History major. Your outstanding work over these past couple of years deserves special recognition.

This year's Outstanding Senior History Major Award went to Bethany MacPherson. This recognition is the result of her consistently terrific work in history courses at ENC throughout her three years with us.

The Outstanding First-Year History Major Award went to two: Josh Donovan and Austin Steelman. Both did exceptional work in 2009-2010.  The Outstanding Senior and First-Year recipients received a selection of history books and monetary awards.

Each year the department inducts top students into the national history honors society, Phi Alpha Theta.  The year the honor went to Jonathan Atwater, David Guevara, and Mary Middleton.

Finally, we're happy to announce that the department continues to do well on the national history exam.  In 2010 Frank Kusnir scored a whopping 97 percentile!


Lee Stetson (’67), a professional actor who has portrayed conservationist John Muir at Yosemite National Park for over twenty years, was a chief talking head in Ken Burns’ lavish six-part PBS series The National Parks: America's Best Idea.

“Stetson's career began as a college history major in Massachusetts,” writes Debbie Croft in the Merced Sun-Star. “He then went to Thailand with the Peace Corps to teach English. While living in Hawaii for more than a decade, acting and directing, he became the founder, manager and artistic director of the Hawaii Performing Arts Company.”

Croft goes on to note: “Now settled in a mountain community not far from Yosemite, Stetson is considered a John Muir authority. Just three years ago he was sought out by Dayton Duncan to have a part in the making of Ken Burns' film series about America's national parks, recently aired on television by PBS."

See more about Stetson’s work and his activism here.  The History Department is proud to have such a distinguished alum who is so wonderfully integrating living history with public education.


Alex Hardy (History, 2010) spent an intellectually vibrant fall 2009 at Oxford University. Hardy participated in the CCCU’s Scholars’ Semester Program at that storied university.  (A dozen other ENC history majors have taken advantage of this as well in the last decade.) There he took tutorials in history and literature and had time to explore the environs a bit.  According to Hardy, it was a wonderful, challenging experience.  It put into practice some of the research and writing he had done at ENC and allowed him to look into some subject areas he is thinking of pursuing in graduate school. 

In the interview embedded here, Prof Stephens asks Hardy about his experience at one of the world’s oldest, most prestigious academic centers.  Oxford dates back to the 12th century and has numerous colleges that boast particular strengths.  Along with other students from the United States, Hardy was hosted by Wycliffe Hall, one of the university’s theological colleges. 

The Wycliffe Hall site describes the progam as follows: "The Scholars’ Semester in Oxford programme brings students from North America to Wycliffe Hall for Michaelmas or Hilary Term, or both.  As registered Visiting Students at the University, the SSO students can take full advantage of the University’s library, lecture, computing, sporting and other facilities.  They follow a typical Oxford programme of tutorials during Full Term, and their own programme for five weeks outside Full Term which supports their tutorial work, enables them to visit important sites in Oxford and beyond, and allows them time for independent study.  SCIO offers specialist study in classics, English language and literature, history, philosophy, and theology."

The ENC History Department is committed to facilitating such experiences for majors.  Travel and study abroad allow students to experience history and culture like little else.


On January 29, 2010 The Pre-Law Program and the History Department, with the help of Professor Karl Giberson, hosted an informal gathering at the Cameron Center (162 Old Colony Road) with Hilary Gettman, Assistant Professor of Management at Stonehill College.

After graduating from ENC with a history degree in 1992, Prof. Gettman went to Harvard Law School for her J.D. She later pursued a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology at the University of Maryland and left the law. Gettman gave an ENC public lecture titled: "Pay Less; Live Worse: The Women of Walmart.”
 
After Professor Gettman's talk she joined students and faculty at the Cameron Center for an informal pizza dinner and conversation about careers, law-school, and what one can do with a History major. It was a wonderful opportunity to hear from a former ENC student who attended one of the elite law schools in America and later decided to leave the practice of law.  Students and faculty peppered Gettman with questions: What was it like to go to ENC and then attend one of the nation’s premiere law schools? What could a student do if he/she went to law school, graduated, passed the bar, but just didn’t enjoy the law? What could students do with a History degree if they really didn't want to teach history?

Future talks and dinners like this are planned for the future. 



Anne Reilly, 2008 ENC History graduate and currently pursuing her PhD in the University of Delaware's History Department, presented a paper in April at the Rutgers University-Camden Center for Children and Childhood Studies. Her paper, "‘Little Americans, Do Your Bit’: The Transformation of Children into Citizens during World War I,” compared government propaganda campaigns and the patriotic rhetoric of juvenile magazines with the activities of children in aid groups, such as the Junior Red Cross. Asked to make sacrifices for the good of the nation, many children planted victory gardens, learned to conserve food, made bandages for soldiers, and bought Thrift Stamps. Support of the war effort served as the child’s entry into the grown-up community of citizenship. But the ideals of service, duty, and sacrifice did not rest on a complete denial of self. Patriotic obligation also fulfilled a child’s desire to have fun, make friends, and enjoy the material goods of a mass-market society. Although children could not legally become citizens until they were older, they effectively became Americans through public service and patriotic consumption.


Phil Rotz has taken a rather interesting route to graduate school. After graduating from ENC in 1999, he spent a year in Washington, D.C. as a youth programs coordinator for the Sojourners Neighborhood Center, followed by two years as a programs assistant with the Harvard School of Public Health’s AIDS Initiative.  In 2002, he moved to Gaborone, Botswana to work as a senior program coordinator in the Botswana-Harvard School of Public Health’s AIDS Initiative Partnership.  And for the last three years, he has been based out of Johannesburg, South Africa with the William J. Clinton Foundation’s HIV/AIDS Initiative, providing technical assistance to Ministries of Health and country teams in Southern and East Africa with designing, implementing and monitoring pre-service and in-service training for medical laboratory staff. And in the Fall Semester of 2010, Phil is entering Boston University to pursue a PhD in African History with Professor Diana Wylie. He has been awarded a fellowship which covers his tuition and other expenses.



The ENC History Department is happy to announce the creation of the Donald A. Yerxa History Department Lounge in Room 107 of the Cameron Center.  The large room—outfitted with furniture and decorations by prof Stephens and his wife Beth in fall 2009— provides a terrific place for history majors and honors students to read, study, or just relax between classes.  It’s also the perfect space for small seminars, lunch and dinner gatherings, as well as being a great venue for guest lectures.  (The lounge is a more appealing and academically appropriate space than Munro Parlor.)  The room is equipped with a large seminar table, a white board, an HD video projector, bookshelves, a printer/scanner/fax machine, couches, chairs, and reproductions of historic engravings and maps of Boston and Quincy. 

Professor Yerxa retired from full-time teaching at ENC in 2009. The good news is that ENC awarded Don emeritus status in May 09. That means he maintains an office at the Cameron Center and will teach a course from time to time. (He’s offering his ever-popular military history class in the fall of 2010.) Many of our alums took classes from him and can attest not only to his enthusiasm for history but his personal interest in the success and well-being of his students. Others studied history with him in the James Cameron-Barbara Faulkner era. And some know Don only from Christian Scholar announcements.  We’re pleased to be able to celebrate professor Yerxa’s career by naming this beautiful new room in his honor. 

None of this could have been possible without the financial support of our dedicated alums.  We thank those who have made it a priority to give to the department over the years.  Your support is greatly appreciated.  (See the video embedded here to get an idea of what your giving has done.)


Two Eastern Nazarene College history professors have been selected by the Conference on Faith and History (CFH) to become the next editors of its scholarly journal.

ENC Professor Emeritus Donald Yerxa and Associate Professor Randall Stephens will become editor and associate editor, respectively, of Fides et Historia, a journal that investigates the relationship between the Christian faith and historical studies. Published twice a year, the journal also presents scholarly research that is informed by Christian faith commitments.

Previously published at Michigan’s Calvin College, Fides et Historia will now be based at ENC, which will collaborate with Point Loma Press on its physical publication. The first ENC-produced issue of Fides will be the journal’s Summer/Fall 2011 issue.

Eastern Nazarene College President Corlis McGee welcomed the editorial offices of Fides et Historia to the ENC campus.

“This is a continuation of Eastern Nazarene’s rich historical tradition,” McGee said. “From professors Timothy Smith and Charles Akers to longtime History Department Chair James Cameron, ENC has distinguished itself as a place where history scholars have inspired generations of students to achieve academic excellence and attain professional prominence.”

Yerxa served as a history professor and administrator at ENC for more than 30 years before being named professor emeritus in May 2009. Currently the director of the 1,000-member Historical Society located at Boston University, he is senior editor of the society’s signature publication, Historically Speaking, published by The Johns Hopkins University Press. He is also contributing editor for Books & Culture and continues to teach on an occasional basis.

Stephens, who chairs ENC’s History Department, is also an editor of Historically Speaking and served as co-editor of the Journal of Southern Religion, one of the first major online peer-review journals, from 2006-2010.

The Conference on Faith and History is a community of 450 scholars who explore the relationship between Christian faith and history.


The Eastern Nazarene College History Department is proud to announce the creation of the Donald S. Metz Lecture in American Christian History.  The annual lecture—sponsored with the generous support of Dr. Metz's students, friends, colleagues, and relatives—will feature a prominent church historian who will deliver a free public lecture on the ENC campus.  The talk will be widely publicized. The lecture is intended to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Metz, a devoted churchman, teacher, scholar, and ENC alum.  The inaugural Metz Lecture in American Christian History is slated for fall 2010. Details will be posted here as plans develop.

The ENC History Department is pleased to announce that Thomas S. Kidd (associate professor of history and co-director of the Program on Historical Studies of Religion, Institute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University) will deliver the first Donald S. Metz Lecture in American Christian History.  The lecture will be held on the ENC campus on Friday, October 15, 2010, at 3:00pm.  The title of professor Kidd's talk is "God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution."

Kidd is a premier scholar and the author of a variety of books on religion in colonial America.  His book, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America, was published by Yale in 2007. University of Notre Dame historian Mark Noll described the book as “Well researched, clearly written and authoritatively argued. There is no book of comparable breadth, either chronologically or geographically.” Kidd also published The Great Awakening: A Brief History with Documents, with Bedford Books in 2007. His American Christians and Islam: Evangelical Culture and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Terrorism was published by Princeton University Press in 2008. Walter Russell Mead thus praised American Christians and Islam in Foreign Affairs: “This concise and well-organized study offers readers an excellent summary of American popular attitudes toward Islam from the eighteenth century onward.”

Kidd is currently writing God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (for Basic Books), on which his ENC Metz Lecture is based, and Patrick Henry: A Biography (for Basic Books).

Kidd has also published articles in The William and Mary Quarterly, The New England Quarterly, Church History, and Religion and American Culture. He was selected for the 2004-05 Young Scholars in American Religion program, and won a 2004 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend. 

The Historical Society blog, edited by Eastern Nazarene College’s history professor Randall Stephens, has garnered an international award from the History News Network’s Cliopatria Group Blog.

Cliopatria named "Richardson’s Rules of Order," contributed by University of Massachusetts: Amherst historian Heather Cox Richardson, the winner of its Best Series of Posts for 2009. The blog is a series of entries for college history students, with gentle tips and advice on adjusting to the demands of higher education.

"Please remember that your professors are human and it's hard work to stand in front of a hundred pairs of eyes and talk for an hour," writes Richardson in one entry. "You don’t have to act like you’re watching U2, but do try to make it clear your heart hasn’t actually stopped beating."

Cliopatria calls Richardson’s blog an "instructive, gentle, and eminently useful guide for college students in history classes… This series of posts will soon be finding its way onto syllabi in history courses across the country."

The idea for the Historical Society blog came out of a National Endowment for the Humanities  sponsored planning conference organized by ENC history professor emeritus Donald Yerxa to discuss the future of the Historical Society and its two publications. Stephens started the blog in March of 2009. The blog features posts on a variety historical topics, conferences, teaching tips, video interviews conducted by Stephens, and more.


Donald Yerxa and Randall Stephens organized and participated in the 2010 Historical Society Conference at George Washington University.
The meeting brought together 400 scholars, public intellectuals, and government officials from around the country to discuss and debate the
future of historical inquiry.



The Eastern Nazarene College History Department presented three lectures in fall 2009 and one in spring 2010 by noted authors and historians.  It was part of the department's growing, alumni-sponsored History Department Lecture Series. All lectures were free and open to the public.

Heather Cox Richardson (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) kicked off the fall lectures with her talk on "Wounded Knee: Gilded Age Economics and the Road to an American Massacre." Richardson received her Ph.D. in 1992 from Harvard’s Program in the History of American Civilization. She is the author of a variety of essays and books, including The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies During the Civil War (Harvard University Press, 1997); The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901 (Harvard University Press, 2001); and West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War (Yale University Press, 2007).

Richardson's talk at ENC was based on her book, Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre (Basic Books, 2010). Richardson argued that the massacre of the Sioux in 1890 in South Dakota dramatically illustrates how political rhetoric, designed in this case to drum up voters for an upcoming election, could devastate the lives of individuals far away from the seat of power.

Journalist and historian Hank Klibanoff met with students of Stephens course on the 1960s and then gave a public lecture.  His co-authored book, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation, won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for History. Klibanoff—a former Boston Globe reporter, deputy managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and managing editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution—spoke on "The Race Beat: Then & Now."  (See Prof Stephens’ interview with Klibanoff about his work on cold cases and civil rights movement history.) In 2010 Klibanoff was appointed James M. Cox Jr. Professor of Journalism at Emory University.

"Thunder on the Right: The Rise of Conservatism in Postwar America" was the topic of historian Bruce Schulman's lecture, held at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 13. The author of From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development and the Transformation of the South, Schulman has also written books on American politics (Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism) and the nation's evolving culture (The Seventies: The Great American Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics).

Fall 2010

The department has a superb schedule lined up for Fall 2010.  All talks will focus on colonial and early US history and will be tied in to several courses being taught as part of ENC's Boston Semester Program. 

Thomas S. Kidd (Baylor University) will kick off the series, delivering the first Donald S. Metz Lecture in American Christian History.  The lecture will be held on the ENC campus on Friday, October 15, 2010, at 3:00pm.  The title of professor Kidd's talk is "God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution."  The Metz Lecture honors the life and academic career of an ENC alum who dedicated his life to teaching and serving God.  The Metz lecture is funded by munificent friends, family, and colleagues of Dr. Metz.

Gordon Wood (Brown University) will give a lecture on the early United States on Monday, November 1.  Wood is the recipient of the Bancroft Prize and the Pulitzer Prizes.  A regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, he is one of the premier colonial historians of our era.  Wood's talk is supported by history alums and others and is part of the new Donald A. Yerxa Lecture in History.  This new series celebrates the career of prof Yerxa by continuing the legacy of history lectures he launched at ENC in the 1990s.

Finally, Jill Lepore (Harvard University) will speak on colonial American history on Nov 18 at 7pm .  Lepore is author of a variety of award-winning history books and is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

See more on fall 2010 lectures here.

The ENC History Department Public Lecture Series is made possible by the generous support of ENC alumni.