Faculty

History at McMurry is taught by a full-time faculty of four who bring a high level of professionalism and personal commitment to the enterprise of being historians. No less than three of the members of the department have won the Gordon R. and Lola J. Bennett Award, McMurry’s most prestigious (and financially rewarding) recognition of academic achievement. To reach each faculty member’s personal web page, simply click on his name or picture below.

Dr. Donald Frazier
Professor of History
Phone: (325) 793-3861
Email: dfrazier @ mcm.edu

M.A., Ph.D., Texas Christian University
B.A., University of Texas at Arlington

Don 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. His documentary script and directorial debut, “‘Our Homes — Our Rights,’ Texas in the Civil War,” which he created for the Texas Civil War Museum in Fort Worth, recently won the Mitchell A. Wilder Award of Merit for museum media from the Texas Association of Museums. Frazier is also the President and C.E.O. of the Grady McWhiney Research Foundation. Bennett Award, 2000.

Dr. Robert F. Pace
Professor of History
Phone: (325) 793-3865
Email: rpace @ mcm.edu

M.A., Ph.D., Texas Christian University
B.A., Austin College

Robert 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, Halls of Honor, published by LSU Press.  One of his more popular classes is The Old South, in which his students simulate 19th century Southern literary societies and debate key issues in Southern history before the rest of the class and invited guests.  Bennett Award, 2008.

Dr. Gary W. Shanafelt
Professor of History
Phone: (325) 793-3863
Email: gshanafelt @ mcm.edu

M.A., Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
B.A., University of California, Irvine

The chief Europeanist of the department is 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 scholarly articles dealing with the Habsburg Monarchy and the Balkans. Most recently he has been researching the life of Edith Durham, who spent much of her life traveling in Albania before World War I.  Bennett Award, 2004.

Dr. Robert P. Wettemann, Jr.
Associate Professor of History
Phone: (325) 793-3864
Email: rwettemann @ mcm.edu
Listen to Dr. Wetteman on the show “The Professors”

M.A., Ph.D., Texas A&M University
B.A., Oklahoma State University

Bob 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. 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. Wettemann will be on leave during the 2008-2009 academic year.

Dr. Robert Fink
Visiting Assistant Professor of History
Phone: (325) 793-4698
Email: rfink @ mcm.edu

M.A., Ph.D., Texas Tech University
B.A., Baylor University

Replacing Wettemann during the coming academic year is Rob Fink. Fink is a specialist in sports history and African-American history. He is under contract for two books; his Playing in Shadows: Texas, the Negro Leagues, and the African-American Community is forthcoming from Texas Tech Press.