Department Updates

Dr. Peter Cole

Associate Professor

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College Faculty Mentoring Award Winner

Dr. Peter Cole is a historian of the twentieth-century United States who teaches the Department's courses on Urban America [History 300] and the Gilded Age/Progressive Era [History 416(G)], as well as the US survey course [History 106], graduate seminars [History 510 and 511], and the undergraduate historical methods course [History 301].

Prof. Cole's research examines matters related to social movements, especially organized labor, although he also maintains scholarly interests in African American, immigration, urban, and maritime history. After working for many years, Dr. Cole was thrilled to see the publication of Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia by the University of Illinois Press in 2007 and Ben Fletcher: The Life & Writings of a Black Wobbly (Charles H. Kerr, 2007).  His work on this union also has been published in Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Left History, and various encyclopedias. Prof. Cole is collaborating with a South African labor historian to compare how the IWW organized workers of color in the USA and South Africa.  Building upon that, he hopes to edit and introduce a book of essays on current research examining transnational aspects of the IWW.  He is also interested in the effects of globalization, so is researching how small industrial towns in the Midwest have handled factory closures.  Finally, he is working on how longshore unions operate in our current “global” era.

Dr. Cole has won several awards and grants, including a University Research Council Grant from WIU, two Faculty Summer Research Stipends from the WIU Foundation, and a CAS Faculty Mentoring Award. He was also accepted to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute on "The Civil Rights Movement" at Harvard University. In Fall 2008 he will give the Banquet Address at the Pennsylvania Historical Society's 77th Annual Meeting in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Dr. Cole was born and raised in South Florida and received his B.A. from Columbia University and his Ph.D. from Georgetown University. Before coming to Western, he taught at Georgetown, Washington College, Western Maryland College, and Boise State University.  When not working, he enjoys trail running, rock climbing, road biking, yoga, backpacking, vegetarian cooking, and traveling.  He joined the Department of History in the fall of 2000.

 

Dr. Cole in the News