History

Edward Woell

Dr. Edward J. Woell, Professor

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]; Old-Regime Europe, 1648-1789 [History 326}, The Enlightenment, 1721-1784 [History 426(G)]; the French Revolution and Napoleon [History 427(G)]. He also offers graduate readings seminars [History 541] on European history.

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, Dr Woell enjoys bicycling on area county roads and occasionally playing a mean game of trivia.

Slide from Dr. Woell's Hallwas Lecture

The first slide from Dr. Woell's 2016 Hallwas Liberal Arts Lecture