Faculty and Staff
Douglas R. Bisson
Professor of History
Ph.D. The Ohio State University
Douglas Bisson has taught at Belmont since 1987. His teaching fields include medieval England, early modern Britain, modern Ireland, medieval Europe, and American baseball history. Professor Bisson is the author of The Merchant Adventurers of England, 1474-1564 (University of Delaware Press, 1993) and co-author of a two-volume textbook, A History of England, fourth edition, (Prentice Hall, 2002). Professor Bisson continues working on a monograph that is tentatively titled The Tudors: A dysfunctional royal family.
Jeff W. Coker
Associate Professor of History
Ph.D. Ohio University
Jeff Coker teaches courses in late-19th and 20th century United States history, with a focus on intellectual, political, and cultural history. Courses he has taught at Belmont include The History of American Thought, The American West, The Vietnam War, and Seminar in American Historical Biography. He also teaches a course on modern African history. Dr. Coker serves as faculty advisor for the Belmont History Society, Phi Alpha Theta, Phi Eta Sigma and advises pre-law students.
Dr. Coker is the author of Confronting American Labor: The New Left Dilemma (University of Missouri Press, 2002), which examines the relationship between the left and the labor movement from the 1930s into the postwar era. He also has published a primary documents reader entitled The President's Position: Debating the Issues in Primary Documents (Greenwood Press, 2002). Currently, he is writing a brief biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt, to appear in Fall 2004 with Greenwood Press. His research interests include American thought and political culture in the twentieth century.
Brenda K. Jackson-Abernathy
Department Chair
Assistant Professor of History
Ph.D. Washington State University
Fields/Teaching Interests:
American West
19th Century United States
Women's History
Latin America
Daniel E. Schafer
Associate Professor of History
Ph.D. University of Michigan
Fields/Teaching Interests:
Russia
Central Asia
Nationalism and Ethnic Minorities
Imperialism
Cynthia S. Bisson
Adjunct Assistant Professor of History
Ph.D. The Ohio State University
Cynthia S. Bisson is an adjunct faculty member who teaches primarily world history in the general education core. Professor Bisson has also taught courses on the French Revolution and Napoleonic Era and the History of Modern Japan. She specializes in the history of Modern France with an emphasis in the area of the administration of criminal justice and its relationship to society in general. Professor Bisson also has a field in the history of Japan from the Tokugawa Shogunate to the present. Her interests in that field include the changing roles of Japanese women and their influence on culture and politics, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Professor Bisson has among her publications several book reviews, entries in the Historical Dictionary of World War II France (Greenwood Press, 1996), and a short article on Napoleon. She has also given papers at sessions of the American Historical Association and French Historical Studies as well as chairing sessions for the European Section of the Southern Historical Association. Her activities for Humanities Tennessee include moderating sessions for the Southern Festival of Books and giving public presentations on Napoleon.
