Department Updates

Dr. Edward Woell

Associate Professor

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Two-time WIU URC Award Winner

Dr. Ed Woell, who joined the Department in the Fall of 2003, specializes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European history. Dr. Woell periodically teaches a variety of history courses, including Western Civilization since 1648 [History 126]; the Age of Enlightenment [History 426(G)]; the French Revolution and Napolean [History 427(G)]; and the Department's historical methods course for History majors [History 301]. He also offers a graduate readings seminar [History 541] concerning ritual in early modern Europe.

Prof. Woell's research interest is religious culture during the French revolutionary era: what ordinary people believed, the ways in which these beliefs were culturally and politically expressed, and how revolutionary events both shaped and were influenced by religious beliefs and practices. Professor Woell's book, Small-Town Martyrs & Murderers: Religious Revolution & Counterrevolution in Western France, 1774-1914, centers upon conflict resulting from the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) within the small towns of several different regions in France. His scholarship has also appeared in publications such as The Catholic Historical Review, The Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, and The Proceedings of the Consortium on Revolutionary Europe.

Dr. Woell's numerous awards and grants include two WIU University Research Council Awards. He was selected by WIU as one of its two nominees for a 2009 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship. When not in the archives or in class, Professor Woell can be found spending time bicycling on area county roads and occasionally playing a mean game of trivia.

 

Dr. Woell in the News