Faculty

Dr. Susan Myers-Shirk

Professor | MTSU Director of General Education

Dr. Susan Myers-Shirk
Email
(615) 898-2386
Room 282, Peck Hall (PH)
MTSU Box 23, Murfreesboro, TN 37132
mtsuculturalhistory.wordpress.com/

Departments / Programs

Degree Information

  • PHD, Pennsylvania State University (1994)
  • MA, Pennsylvania State University (1988)
  • BA, Messiah College (1980)

Areas of Expertise

U.S. Cultural and Intellectual History

Biography

My research and teaching interests intersect in the history of values. I teach courses about how Americans have made moral and aesthetic choices, offering topics courses on the history of cultural rebellion, alternative spirituality, and road culture, as well as a course on how cultural hierarchies are created. I have a particular weakness for interdisciplinary approaches. My current research unites all of my interests—psychology (consciousness), spirituality, road culture (pilgrimage),...

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My research and teaching interests intersect in the history of values. I teach courses about how Americans have made moral and aesthetic choices, offering topics courses on the history of cultural rebellion, alternative spirituality, and road culture, as well as a course on how cultural hierarchies are created. I have a particular weakness for interdisciplinary approaches. My current research unites all of my interests—psychology (consciousness), spirituality, road culture (pilgrimage), environmentalism, landscape, and geography—in a new project tentatively titled The Secret Life of the Counterculture.

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Publications

Myers-Shirk, Susan. Helping the Good Shepherd: Pastoral Counselors in a Psychotherapeutic Culture, 1925-1975. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

Awards

MTSU Outstanding Achievement in Instructional Technology Award, 2007-2008 Visiting Fellow, Spring 1998, Center for the Study of American Religion, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ Faculty Fellow, 1997-1998, Pew Program in Religion and American History, Yale University, New Haven, CT

Courses

Undergraduate Courses Taught History 2010, Survey United States History I History 2020, Survey United States History II History 4740, U.S. Cultural and Intellectual History History 3040 Topics in U. S. Cultural History; topics include history of the counterculture, post-1965 alternative spirituality, and road culture Graduate Courses Taught History 6010, Historiography History 6020, Historical Research Methods History 6105, Seminar: Research in American History