Dr. Erin Kempker

Professor of History

OFFICE: 212-B Painter Hall
EMAIL: emkempker@muw.edu
PHONE: 662-329-7155

About Dr. Kempker

BS in Social Studies/Secondary Education, Central Missouri State University
MA in History, Purdue University
PhD in History, Purdue University

Teaching areas: American history, women’s history, twentieth century history.  My classes include: HIS 326 Women in America, HIS 363 U.S. in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, HIS 365 America since 1940, HIS 371 Movies and American Society, HIS 405 Religion in America, and HIS 441 America Social History

Research areas: Women’s political history, grassroots political movements, right-wing and conservative history, the history of American conspiracy, and the history of second wave feminism

Selected publications: 

  • Big Sister: Feminism, Conservatism, and Conspiracy in the Heartland,University of Illinois Press, 2018
  • “Coalition and Control: Hoosier Feminists and the Equal Rights Amendment,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol. 34, no. 2 ( Fall 2013): 52-81.
  • “Battling ‘Big Sister’ Government: Hoosier Women and the Politics of International Women’s Year,” Journal of Women’s History, vol. 24, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 144-170.
  • “The Union, the War, and Elvira Scott.” Missouri Historical Review 95, no. 3 (April 2001): 287-301. Reprint in A Rough Business: Fighting the Civil War in Missouri, ed. William Garrett Piston, 109-123. Columbia: State Historical Society of Missouri Press, 2012.

Other: Dr. Kempker is a member of the Women’s Studies teaching faculty and coordinator of the interdisciplinary American Studies minor.