Todd S. Gernes

Biography

Associate Professor of History Todd S. Gernes is a social and cultural historian whose teaching and scholarship focuses on American culture and society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with specializations in literary history, literacy studies, decorative arts and material culture, the history of the book, museum studies, race and ethnicity, and women’s history. Gernes has published articles and book reviews in MELUS, The New England Quarterly, The African American Review, The Winterthur Portfolio, World History Connected, and The International Journal on the Inclusive Museum, as well as book chapters, literary translations, and essays in scholarly anthologies. 

His present research includes a cultural biography of African American activist and club woman, Mabel E. Diggs (1894 to 1897), and a contextual study of the pedagogy of the Blessed Basile Moreau (1799 to 1873), founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross.

Education

• A.M. & Ph.D., American Civilization, Brown University
• B.A. & M.A., English and American Literature, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Courses Taught

• American Nation I & II
• American Family History
• The Gilded Age and the Progressive Era
• The Great War (1914 to 1918)
• History of Jazz
• African American History
• The Civil Rights Era
• The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
• The Electric Guitar in American Culture
• In the Footsteps of Basile Moreau