The Modern Scholar Podcast

Dr. Betty Lai is an Associate Professor in Counseling Psychology at Boston College. Dr. Lai’s research focuses on the impacts of the climate crisis and disasters such as hurricanes, floods, wildfires on children. Dr. Lai is the author of The Grant Writing Guide: A Road Map for Scholars from Princeton University Press, and this book is the subject of our conversation today. Her work has been funded...

Adrian Miller is a food writer, James Beard Award winner, attorney, and certified barbecue judge who lives in Denver, Colorado. Adrian received an A.B in International Relations from Stanford University in 1991, and a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1995. From 1999 to 2001, Miller served as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton with his Initiative for One America – the fi...

Katherine Sharp Landdeck is a Professor of History at Texas Woman’s University, the home of the WASP archives . A Guggenheim Fellow at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and a graduate of the University of Tennessee, where she was a Normandy Scholar and earned her Ph. D. in American History, Landdeck has received numerous awards for her work on the WASP and has appeared as an expert on...

Dr. Ron Granieri is Professor of History in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the US Army War College, where he is the editor and principal host of A Better Peace , the official podcast of The War Room . A graduate of Harvard and the University of Chicago, he also serves as Director of the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, wher...

Dr. Jeremy Yellen is a historian of modern Japan based in Hong Kong. He holds a Ph. D. in history from Harvard University, and since 2014 has been teaching at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Jeremy’s research focuses on modern Japan’s international, diplomatic, and political history. His work largely grapples with questions of warfare, empire, diplomacy, and international order, and pair Japa...

Dr. Robert “Bob” Wettemann is an Associate Professor of History at the United States Air Force Academy. He holds a B.A. with Honors in History from Oklahoma State University, and M.A. and Ph. D. degrees in History from Texas A&M University. He is the author of Privilege vs. Equality: Civil Military Relations in the Jacksonian Era, 1815-1845 (Praeger Security International, 2009) and numerous a...

Benjamin Allison is a PhD student in History and a Graduate Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin specializing in 20th century US foreign relations, especially vis-á-vis the Middle East and Russia. He is the lead author of the forthcoming book Die in Your Rage: The Logic of Violence in Jihadist Insurgency with Samuel S. Stanton. A graduate of Kent...

Dr. Kyriakos Nalmpantis is Chair of the Department of History and assistant professor of European history at Baldwin Wallace University. He has a total of nineteen years teaching experience, and in addition to teaching at Baldwin Wallace, has taught at Cleveland State University, Kent State University, and at the Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. His primary research focus is on wartime Greece...

Felton Thomas is the Executive Director of Cleveland Public Library in Cleveland, Ohio. Since beginning his tenure at CPL, Director Thomas has furthered the mission of CPL to be “The People’s University,” including launching initiatives aimed at addressing community needs in the areas of access to technology, education, and economic development. Prior to taking the role in Cleveland, Mr. Thomas se...

Stephanie Hinnershitz is Senior Historian with the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy at the National World War II Museum and earned her PhD from the University of Maryland in 2013, and then served as an assistant professor at Valdosta State University and again at Cleveland State University before joining the team at the Museum. Her specialty is the American home front and civil-militar...

Dr. Rob Thompson is a historian with the Films Team at the Army University Press . He received his PhD in History from the University of Southern Mississippi, and he specializes in the study of the Vietnam War, with a focus on the confluence of conventional warfare and pacification at the province level. His research places American strategy in the context of a single province—Phú Yên, and this is...

My guest today is Dr. Tanya Roth. She earned her history PhD from Washington University in St. Louis and teaches high school and middle school history at MICDS in St. Louis, Missouri. She is the author of Her Cold War: Women in the U.S. Military, 1945-1980 which is the subject of our conversation today. Her research has been recognized by the American Association of University Women, and in 2019 a...

Erica Lunde is the Garden Programmer for the Faulkner County Library in Conway, Arkansas. In 2018 she graduated from the University of Nebraska—Lincoln with a Fisheries and Wildlife degree. In 2020 she moved to Arkansas and was hired as part-time circulation staff for the Faulkner County Library. Since then, she has become the full time Garden Programmer. In this position, she brainstorms, creates...

Dr. Aaron Bateman is an Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University and an affiliate of the Space Policy Institute. He received his Master’s in International Relations from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and his PhD in the History of Science and Technology at Johns Hopkins University. His research takes place at the intersection of science, techno...

Rob Williams recently completed his PhD in History at The Ohio State University, researching the emergence, and development of a distinct “airborne” subculture during World War II and its influence on the U.S. Army during the Cold War. In a former life, he served as an infantryman and paratrooper with three deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, he is married with two children, and resides in Columb...

This week, Dr. Paul "PJ" Springer is here to help me introduce my book to all of you, so the tables have turned and I'm a guest on my own show! Weird, I know. Cue the third-person bio. As a military historian, Philip Shackelford brings a unique focus on organizational culture and development to the history of communications intelligence, national security, and the U.S. Air Force duri...

Dr. Elena Wicker recently completed her Ph. D. in International Relations at Georgetown University. Her dissertation, The Words That Matter: Terminology and Performance in the U.S. Army , explores the history of U.S. military lexicography and the strategic creation and use of jargon in strategy, doctrine, and concepts. Her interdisciplinary and multi-method research combines archival research, int...

We have a FANTASTIC bonus episode for you all today! Last Saturday several history podcasters came together to present a round table discussion about podcasting during the 2023 Society for Military History annual conference, held in San Diego. We recorded that session as a live episode, and are very excited to provide it for you here today! The session was titled "Making Airwaves: The Profess...

Dr. Heather Venable is an Associate Professor of Military and Security Studies in the Department of Airpower at the U.S. Air Force Air Command and Staff College. As a visiting professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, she taught naval and Marine Corps history. She graduated with a BA in History from Texas A&M University and a MA in American History from the University of Hawai’i. She received her P...

Dr. Marjorie Galelli is the Associate Director of the Center for Military, War, and Society Studies at the University of Kansas, where she recently received her PhD. She is also a Henry Chauncey ’57 Postdoctoral fellow in the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale. Her research focuses on the relationship between the US military, the government, the media, and the American people, through...

Dr. Bethany Wasik is an Acquisitions Editor with Cornell University Press. She currently acquires projects in the fields of Classics, Archaeology, Modern Western European History, and Military History. Prior to joining the acquisitions team at Cornell Bethany completed a PhD and two postdoctoral fellowships in molecular genetics and evolutionary biology. Her transition from academia to publishing...

Relinda Ruth is the Director of Educational Resources and OER Specialist at the University of Arkansas-Cossatot Community College. She is responsible for the Educational Resource Center (ERC) at three campuses, which includes Kimball Library, all tutoring services, the college’s award-winning textbook rental & OER program, along with textbook procurement. She was instrumental in building the s...

Dr. Jason Herbert is an ethnographer for the Seminole Tribe of Florida, where he is the primary author of an ethnographic study of the Everglades, and he is the creator of the Historians at the Movies , the international phenomenon bringing together a community of historians and film lovers around the world to watch different movies each week and analyze the historical implications and cultural re...

*Since recording our conversation April stepped into a new role as Regional Manager for the Carroll and Madison Library System. Congrats!* April Griffith is the Library Director at the Carnegie Public Library in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. She received her MSLS from Clarion University in 2012, and has worked in academic, special and public libraries over the past decade. Her passion for the intersec...

Neil Oatsvall hails from and resides on the East Coast but he spent over a decade landlocked in the middle of the country. He did his undergraduate work at the University of North Carolina in Asian Studies (Japanese language) and history, and received his doctorate in history from the University of Kansas. Currently, Neil teaches high school history at the Triangle Math and Science Academy in Cary...