Dr. David Rowe

Professor

CONTACT
E-mail: david.rowe@mtsu.edu
Phone: (615) 898-2646
Office Location and Mailing Address: Peck Hall, Room 286
MTSU Box 23
Murfreesboro, TN 37132
Link to Personal Website: http://mtweb.mtsu.edu/dlrowe/Welcome.html

FIELDS: American Religious History, Research and Writing in History, Teaching Historical Thinking

BIOGRAPHY: I was born and raised in upstate New York and moved to Tennessee in 1981 to teach in the History Department here at MTSU. I am a non-ordained staff-person at St. Paul's Episcopal Church where I assist with liturgy and spiritual formation. The Myers-Briggs Typological Inventory figures in much of my work, as do many of the movies I love to watch.

UNDERGRADUATE COURSES TAUGHT:

• History 2010, 2020, Survey of American History; In my survey courses, students do not learn history so much as they learn how to think historically by exploring the past through a variety of resources, especially primary documents, and learning how to use history's database rather than trying to memorize it.
• History 2010H, 2020H; Honors students encounter the same approach to learning historical thinking with the addition of a smaller class that encourages and requires in-depth conversation and writing.
• History 3010, The Historian's Craft; Students learn and sharpen basic skills required of historians-research, critical thinking, writing-and develop the attitudes and ethics of the historians' craft.
• History 3020, Topics in American History, Preachers and Prophets; A maymester course in which we use readings and film to explore how cinematic "literature" reflects and changes the reality of religion as Southerners have lived it out principally in the 20th century.
• Honors 4600, Senior Interdisciplinary Seminar: Living the American Dream; Honors students use a variety of materials and disciplines to explore the content, the meaning, and the significance of the American Dream for Americans in general and then apply those lessons to shape and communicate their own American dream using the medium of their choice.
• History 4650, Religious Experience in America; This course asks two questions that we explore throughout the semester: how has religion shaped America, and how has America shaped religion?

GRADUATE COURSES TAUGHT:

• History 6020, Historical Research Methods; Students learn and improve essential methods of research, focus on improving writing in history, and explore the meaning of the craft for themselves in terms of their vocational objectives.
• History 6102: Readings in the 19th Century; Using a variety of readings in the fields of government, society, economics, culture, and global relations, students will explore the theme of change in the 19th century in terms of the theme "from boundlessness to consolidation."
• History 6250/7260, Seminar in American Religious History (currently offered through the periodic 6910: Selected Studies in American History course); Explores major themes in the interaction of religious cultures from around the world as they migrate to the United States.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

Rowe, David. God's Strange Work: William Miller and the End of the World. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman's, 2008.

Rowe, David. Thunder and Trumpets: The Millerites and Apocalyptic Thought in Upstate New York. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985.

Please click here to see Dr. Rowe discuss his teaching.

 

EDUCATION:

Please see http://mtweb.mtsu.edu/dlrowe/Welcome.html

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