Quick Navigation

Northern Illinois University

Department of History

J. D. Bowers
Director of Secondary Teacher Certification for History and Social Sciences and Assistant Professor

Fields of Study: Religion, Genocide and Human Rights, memory and commemoration, United States-19th and 20th Centuries, Colonial Empires,  Comparative/Transnational

E-mail: jbowersi@niu.edu
Phone: 815-753-6655
Office: Zulauf Hall 701

Education: Ph.D. Indiana University, 2003

Current Research: I am working on a project that explores the impact of American religion and practice in the Untied States as it was transformed by its encounter with the political and social developments during the ages of the American industrial revolution, imperialism, and World War I.  Its premise is that the three major strains of American religious denominations, liberal, conservative, and mainstream, were forced to make significant accommodations and alterations to their theology and practice as they were, wittingly and unwittingly, cast into the public sphere in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  I am also working on a project that focuses on the "Cyprus Question" and the divisions between the Turkish and Greek Communities as well as several smaller projects that center on human rights violations, genocide, and instruction.

Major/Recent Publications:

  • Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America (Penn State University Press, May 2007)
  • “Teaching Nineteenth-Century American Religion in a Global Context,” in Gary Reichard and Ted Dickson, eds., American on the World Stage: Essays on the Teaching of the United States History Survey (University of Illinois Press, 2008), forthcoming.
  • “Hawaii,” in Benjamin F. Shearer, ed., The Uniting States: The Story of Statehood for the Fifty United States of America, vol. 1, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), 295-324

Teaching Interests: The intersections of religion, violence, human rights violations, and public commemoration in American and Global society.

Courses Taught:

  • HIST 260 United States History to 1865
  • HIST 261 United States History since 1865
  • HIST 364 History of American Religion to 1865
  • HIST 365 History of American Religion since 1865
  • HIST 387 History of Genocide
  • HIST 388 History of the Pacific Islands since 1600
  • HIST 492 Introduction to Public History
  • ILAS 390 Internship in Public History (Undergraduate)
  • HIST 500 Internship in Public History (Graduate)
  • HIST 496 Secondary Social Studies Teaching Methods, Grades 6-12
  • HIST 498R Graduate Readings in Pacific Island History since 1600
  • HIST 498T Graduate Readings in Genocide and Human Rights
  • HIST 510 Graduate Readings Seminar in U.S. Religious History and Culture
  • HIST 636M Graduate Readings in Public History


Interdisciplinary Affiliations:

Director, Secondary Teacher Certification in History and the Social Sciences

Director, Genocide and Human Rights Institute

Museum Studies Committee

Religious Studies Faculty Interest Group

Cyprus Study Abroad Program

 

Link to CV | Link to Personal Website