Faculty Members

The chief Europeanist and current chair of the department is Professor Dr. Gary W. Shanafelt.  Shanafelt’s expertise is modern Germany and Central Europe.  He is the author of The Secret Enemy: Austria-Hungary and the German Alliance, 1914-1918, as well as articles dealing with the Habsburg Monarchy and the Balkans.  Most recently he has been working on the life of Edith Durham, who spent much of her life traveling in Albania before World War I. He tinkers with web pages on the side, including this one.

Professor Dr. Donald Frazier is the author of two books on the Civil War, Blood and Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest, and Cottonclads! The Battle of Galveston and the Defense of the Texas Coast.  He has edited The United States and Mexico at War and recently co-authored Frontier Texas: History of a Borderland to 1880 with Robert Pace.  In addition to his own writing, he has participated in three historical documentaries including a radio program for National Public Radio.  Frazier is also the Executive Director of the McWhiney Foundation.

Professor Dr. Robert F. Pace is an expert on the social life and customs of 19th-century Americans.  He has edited Fear God and Walk Humbly: The Agricultural Journal of James Mallory, 1843-1877, and co-authored Frontier Texas: History of a Borderland to 1880 with Don Frazier.  If that isn’t enough, he has also recently completed a new book on college life in the antebellum South.   That work, entitled Halls of Honor, has just appeared from LSU Press.  Dr. Pace will be on sabbatical during the Fall 2006 semester.

Assistant Professor Dr. Robert P. Wettemann joined the faculty in the fall of 2001.  A recent Ph.D. recipient from Texas A&M University, he brings an expertise in public history to the offerings of the department.  He also serves as the regional coordinator for the National History Day competition and commands a living history company of 1850s United States infantry. His article “‘A Prop for the American System’:  West Point, Andrew Jackson, and the General Survey Act” has just been published as one of a number of studies in West Point: Two Centuries and Beyond.

Dr. Robert W. Sledge, Professor Emeritus of History and McWhiney Foundation Historian in Residence, recently retired from the faculty after 37 years of service.  He continues his research from an office in the Jay-Rollins Library Building.

The department is equally well-served by its adjuncts. Rev. Bill Libby, who is currently McMurry’s Athletics Director, is helping to lead an ongoing archæological excavation in Jordan.