Faculty

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William H. Bergmann

Dr. William H. Bergmann William H. Bergmann, Ph.D. - University of Cincinnati
303 D Spotts World Culture Building
724.738.4655
william.bergmann@sru.edu

Dr. Bergmann grew up in New Hampshire and first came to Pennsylvania as an undergraduate at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster. After graduate school and starting his career elsewhere, Dr. Bergmann returned to Pennsylvania in 2012 when he joined the SRU History Depart to teach Pennsylvania history, Native American history, and early American history.

His dissertation, which was awarded the Allan Nevins Prize from the Economic History Association in 2005, was an early version of his book The American National State and the Early West (Cambridge, 2012). The book examines the role of the federal government in shaping western expansion in the Ohio Valley from the 1780s through the War of 1812.

Dr. Bergmann also is the author of Homestead in Conflict: Labor and Corporations in Industrial America, 1881-1892, a Reacting to the Past game in development that explores debates shaping industrial Pittsburgh. He also has a couple side projects: one on German aliens in Bellevue, Pennsylvania, during World War I; and another that examines masculinity in credit reports in Ohio Valley cities during the middle of the 19th century.

In his spare time, Dr. Bergmann enjoys reading fiction, watching movies, and volunteering in his local school district.

Research Fields: 18th and 19th century Ohio Valley history, economic history, American governmen

Teaching Fields: Colonial America, the American Revolution, the Early Republic, Native American history, masculinity, Constitution & Law, historical methods

Aaron Cowan

Dr. Aaron Cowan, Ph.D. Aaron Cowan, Ph.D. - University of Cincinnati
303 G Spotts World Culture Building
724.738.2409
aaron.cowan@sru.edu

A native of southwest Virginia, Dr. Aaron Cowan has been teaching at Slippery Rock University since 2008. He is the author of A Nice Place to Visit: Tourism and Urban Revitalization in the Postwar Rustbelt, published by Temple University Press. The book examines the rise of tourism as a revitalization strategy in struggling "Rustbelt" cities, and the effects of that development on cities' political, economic, and social dynamics.

Dr. Cowan is also co-founder and co-director of the Hill District Digital History Project, a collaboration between SRU’s History Department and Hill CDC dedicated to preserving and sharing the history and culture of Pittsburgh’s historic Hill District.

Dr. Cowan lives in Grove City with his wife and three children. When not teaching, writing, or buried under a pile of grading, he enjoys reading fiction, playing tennis, and cheering for the Cincinnati Reds.

Research Fields: 20th century U.S. urban history, tourism, public history

Teaching Fields: Modern United States, urban history, environmental history, public history

Melissa Ford

Melissa Ford, Ph.D. - Saint Louis University
303 H Spotts World Culture Building
724.738.4744
melissa.ford@sru.edu

Melissa Ford is an Associate Professor in the History Department. She joined Slippery Rock faculty in 2017 after receiving her PhD in American Studies from Saint Louis University. Her undergraduate degree is from Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She teaches classes on United States History, African American history, women’s history, social movements, and popular culture.

A native of St. Louis, her research interests include Midwestern social movements that intersect with race, class, and gender. Her first book was published in 2022 by Southern Illinois University Press, titled A Brick and a Bible: Black Women’s Radical Activism in the Midwest. Her second book, Their Example Will Inspire Us: Five Black Communist Women, was published by International Publishers in 2024. She is currently working on a book of biographies of Black communist women for International Publishers. She is currently working on a manuscript on the Scottsboro Mothers. More information can be found at https://melissafordphd.com/.

Outside of the classroom, Dr. Ford is advisor of Phi Alpha Theta, the History Honorary Society, and the Improv Club at SRU. She is a member of the Gender Studies Committee and is the editor of Black History Matters and Her Story Matters, journals of student essays celebrating Black History Month and Women's History Month. The journals are available here: https://heyzine.com/shelf/a9659026f5.html

She also serves as the director of the History MA program.

Research Fields: 20^th century social movements, radical history, labor history, Black women’s history

Teaching Fields: US history, popular culture, women’s history, African American history

Corinne Gressang

Corinne Gressang, Ph.D. - University of Kentucky
303 C Spotts World Culture Building
724.738.2403
corinne.gressang@sru.edu

Dr. Corinne Gressang is an Associate Professor of History. She specializes in the history of the French Revolution, but she teaches various courses on Modern European History and the Atlantic World. She grew up in Western Pennsylvania and received her undergraduate degree in History with a minor in Legal Studies from Grove City College in 2013. From there, she received her MA and Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in 2015 and 2020, respectively. She spent three years teaching at Erskine College in Due West, SC as an Assistant Professor before moving back home to Western Pennsylvania to teach at Slippery Rock in 2023.

Her dissertation research was on the dissolution of convents during the French Revolution. She is interested in gender studies, religious studies, and identity studies. Her current research projects focusing on religion during the French Revolution and Napoleonic France. She is also working on a new research project on senses and emotions in the convents.

She is a member of the Western Society for French History, the Society for French Historical Studies, Phi Alpha Theta, and the American Catholic Historical Association. Dr. Gressang currently serves as an Assistant Digital Coordinator for the Society for French Historical Studies and is a member of the executive council for the Western Society for French History. She has won numerous teaching awards including the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2026. When she is not teaching, grading, researching, or writing, Dr. Gressang enjoys hiking, running, and hanging out with her family.

Ariana Meyers

Dr. Myers was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She received her B.A. in History, Classical Languages, and Spanish from Ripon College before heading to Princeton University, where she earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Medieval History. She taught and worked at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee and Kenyon College before joining the History Department at Slippery Rock University in 2026.

Dr. Myers research focuses on the history of interfaith slavery in medieval Iberia and the western Mediterranean. Her dissertation (available here) addresses the development of a new notarial category of person "between Christian and Muslim" in the Crown of Aragon, the region of Catalonia in modern Spain. She has published an article on another kind of categorization which Catalan notaries developed at the same time: by skin color (available here). These were closely linked, and together may help to explain the transition from medieval religious-based slavery to early modern racialized slavery. She will expand upon this with her first book project, The Baptizati: Notarial Classification and the Transformation of Medieval Catalan Slavery.

Research Fields: Medieval Mediterranean & Europe, Slavery, Interfaith religious history (Christianity, Islam, & Judaism)

Teaching Fields: Ancient & Medieval, Europe, Mediterranean, History of religion

Wilson Miu

Dr. Wilson Miu is from Hong Kong and was raised in San Francisco, California. He earned his BA from the University of Chicago and his MA and Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He teaches Asian history and Modern World History at Slippery Rock University.

Before joining SRU, Dr. Miu was a postdoctoral teaching fellow at Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. His teaching and research interests include social history, legal history, gender and family, gastronomic diplomacy and food history, and the history of medicine. His dissertation on marriage practices and marriage law in South China from 1930 to 1980 argues that, despite a long history of increasing government involvement in daily life, various state regimes could not fully enforce compliance with marriage laws, and that these laws failed to change practices such as bride price and dowry. Nonetheless, people’s ability to operate outside the law gradually declined as state regulatory capacity grew from the 1940s to the 1970s.

He is currently writing about the history of premarital health examinations in China and the social history of wartime China under occupation. Outside of academic work, he enjoys browsing r/wallstreetbets, investing in the stock market, watching cat videos, and cooking.

He welcomes questions about China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, as well as East Asian history and culture in general.

Research Fields: Social and Legal History of Modern China (20th- 21st centuries); Gender, Family, and Law; History of Medicine

Teaching Fields: East Asian History; Hong Kong and Taiwan; Modern World History; History of commodities and disease

Thomas L. Pearcy

Dr. Thomas L. Pearcy Thomas L. Pearcy, Ph.D. - University of Miami, Coral Gables
303 E Spotts World Culture Building
724.738.2407
thomas.pearcy@sru.edu

I completed a BA (Political Science) and an MA (American History) at Purdue University and earned a Ph.D. (Latin American History) from the University of Miami in Coral Gables. I have an established record of scholarly excellence including a half-dozen research monographs published by university presses in the US and Panama, a coauthored US History textbook, and more than one dozen articles published in professional journals. I have also served as Director of Latin American Studies at BYU (where I established the Rey L. Pratt Center for the Study of Latin America online), served as a senior Fulbright Scholar, and taught at six universities throughout North and Central America. Fellowships, teaching awards, and serving as Joint Historian for the US Department of State and Central Intelligence Agency round out my C.V.

Research fields: Panamanian history, including the barriadas brujas; US-Central American relations.

Teaching fields: Latin American history, US Diplomacy, US history since 1930, the Kennedy assassination, and contemporary world history

Eric E. Tuten

Dr. Eric E. Tuten Eric E. Tuten, Ph.D., University of Utah
303 B Spotts World Culture Building
724.738.4913
eric.tuten@sru.edu

I have been at SRU since 2006. Before arriving at SRU, I taught history and religious courses at Brigham Young University for six years and then worked for the US government as a political analyst focusing on Middle East issues. While with the government, I spent six months in Iraq in 2005. I have also spent time in Israel/Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, Spain, and England, and, in summer of 2011, I taught world history and cultures at Kangwon National University, Chuncheon campus, in South Korea.

Areas of Specialty, Courses Taught, & Research Interests: My main area of specialty is modern Middle East history, with an emphasis on the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I also teach courses in Jewish and world history and in Holocaust/Genocide Studies. I teach the following courses on a regular rotation:

Middle East—
- HIST 462 The Contemporary Middle East
- HIST 463 Israel—History, State, and Society (dealing with the modern state of Israel
- Graduate-level courses
  - HIST 585 Modern Middle East
  - HIST 662 The Arabs and Israel
World History/Holocaust and Genocide Studies—
- HIST 152 Early Modern to Contemporary World
- HIST 371 History of the Jews (introductory from ancient to nineteenth century)
- HIST 406 Mass Killing (Massacre) and Genocide in the Modern World
- Graduate-level course (currently developing)
  - HIST 606 Mass Killing (Massacre) and Genocide in the Modern World
Introductory Freshman Courses
- HIST 139 Foundations of Academic Discovery
- HIST 180 Spotlight on the Past: Holocaust

Research fields:land tenure in the Middle East and Palestine/Israel; nationalism in the Middle East, particularly Zionism and Palestinian Arab nationalism; meanings and uses of land in the Israeli-Palestinian experience and in world history.

MESRU and Holocaust Remembrance

I was a founding member of the Center for Middle East Studies at SRU (the MESRU Center) and have served as a member of the Executive Committee ever since, contributing to the Center’s goals by occasionally organizing speakers and participating on panels (see MESRU).

I am also the Director of SRU’s annual Holocaust Remembrance Program (HRP). We bring a speaker to campus in the spring to address the SRU and broader community and local high school students. In spring 2022, we officially named the speaking event The Richard T. Martin Presentation on the Holocaust, in honor of former and, sadly, now deceased, Political Science professor Richard Martin (1950-2019), who directed the program for some 20 plus years during his tenure at SRU.

In recent years, we have expanded the HRP to include Holocaust-related music and film.

Family and Interests

I live with my wife Alexandra (Alex) and one stepson in Slippery Rock, PA. Between us, we have six sons (joined families); I brought two to the mix and Alex brought four. When I’m not at work or spending time with my family and friends, I enjoy

Music: I’m very eclectic, but I’m deeply into jazz in all its varieties (from Dixieland/New Orlean jazz, through swing, bop, cool, hard bop, to fusion, avant-garde, and free jazz); “roots” and “classic” rock; and classical music in all its varieties
Reading broadly, both inside and outside my field; I especially have a layman’s interest in physics and astronomy
Sports (all racquet/paddle sports, but I’m addicted to playing Pickleball; football; baseball; basketball)
Anything that flies (from paper airplanes to RCs).

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