Department of History

His book, Spying from Space: Constructing America's Satellite Command and Control Systems, was published in 2005 by Texas A&M University Press. In 2006, he received the Gill Robb Wilson Award from the United States Air Force for his writing on national defense. He now is the commander of the 22d Space Operations Squadron and is the editor of Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly.

Scott Billingsley (Auburn History Ph.D., 2003), is an Assistant Professor of History and Program Director of Graduate Social Studies Education at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Pembroke, North Carolina.

At Auburn, he wrote his dissertation, "New Prophets for Emerging American Subcultures: The Rise of Women and African American Evangelists in the Independent Charismatic Movement, 1950-2000," under the direction of Professor David Edwin Harrell, Jr. The book manuscript, tentatively titled "'It's a New Day': Race and Gender in the Modern Charismatic Movement," is currently under consideration for publication by the University of Alabama Press. Building on Harrell's pioneering work All Things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America, this study chronicles the rise of women and African American evangelists in the independent charismatic movement in post-World War II America. These ministers served as cultural mediators between the secular and religious worlds, taking the socially, politically, and theologically liberal ideologies of the Civil Rights and feminist movements and adapting them to fit the sensibilities of conservative evangelical audiences.

He received his M.A. in American History from Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, in December 1996, writing his M.A. thesis, "The Newbern Trial: A Study of Restorationism and Primitivism in American Religion," under the direction of Professor David Rowe.

He received his B.A. in Social Studies Education from David Lipscomb University in May, 1991.

He is married to Kelly Billingsley, and they have a daughter, Afton.

He is an Assistant Professor of History at Montevallo University teaching U.S. history, southern history, the history of technology, and military history.

Frandsen received the Ira Eaker Award, the top award given by Air and Space Power Journal, for an article based on Chapter 7 of his book, Hat in the Ring.

Jeff Frederick (Auburn History Ph.D., 2003) is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke where he teaches courses in the New South, the Old South,American Political History, and Sports and Society: An American Cultural History.

At Auburn, he wrote his dissertation "Command and Control: George Wallace, Governor of Alabama, 1963-1972," under the direction of Wayne Flynt. The manuscript, extended to the end of Wallace's life, is under contract with the University of Alabama Press. He is currently beginning research on a new book which traces the intersection of sports and politics in the post World War II South.

He is married to Melinda Frederick, and the father of Logan, Jack, and Quinton.

Originally from Moulton, Alabama, John holds the BA and the MA in history from Auburn University, and the MAR in Biblical Studies from Lipscomb University in Nashville. His work experience in historical and related fields includes stints as a graduate assistant with the Alabama Review, the Encyclopedia of Alabama, and the world history program; adjunct teaching at Faulkner University in Montgomery; and full-fledged employment as an archivist for the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

Jeremy R. Kinney (Auburn History PhD, 2003) is a Curator in the Aeronautics Division of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and a Lecturer in the Honors Program at the University of Maryland at College Park. His research and teaching focuses on American technology and aeronautics in the first half of the twentieth century.

Kinney completed his dissertation on "'Shifting Gears in the Air': America and the Variable-Pitch Propeller, 1918-1938" under the direction of Professor Stephen L. McFarland. Called the "gearshift of the air," the variable-pitch propeller worked in synergy with innovations in streamline design, all-metal construction, sophisticated engines, and advanced fuels to facilitate the onset of the new and "modern" airplane in the early 1930s.

Kinney's Airplanes: The Life Story of a Technology appeared in 2006 as part of the highly-regarded Greenwood Technographies Series. Johns Hopkins University Press selected the book for a paperback edition in 2008.

Working with Jim Hansen, Kinney is a member of the team that produced The Wind and Beyond: Journey into the History of Aerodynamics in America published by NASA. Volume one of The Wind and Beyond received the inaugural Eugene Ferguson Prize given by the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT). Named in honor of one of SHOT's pioneering members, the Ferguson Prize recognizes an outstanding and original reference work that will support future scholarship in the history of technology.

While at Auburn, Kinney served as an inaugural Auburn University Presidential Graduate Fellow from 1998 to 2000. From the Graduate School, he received the Dean's Award for Excellence for 1999-2000 and was named one of ten outstanding graduate students for 2000-2001. The College of Liberal Arts awarded him the W.C. Bradley Award for Graduate Student Achievement in the Humanities in 2000. Kinney received the department's Melvin Kranzberg Award for Outstanding Paper in the History of Technology in 2000.

Kinney is the recipient of both the American Historical Association National Aeronautics and Space Administration Fellow in Aerospace History and the Smithsonian Institution Guggenheim Fellowship in Aerospace History.

He attended Greensboro College in Greensboro, North Carolina, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History in May 1994.

He lives in suburban Maryland and drives his 1966 Triumph TR4A every chance he gets.

Sara Kathleen Peters (Auburn History M.A., 2003) wrote her M.A. thesis on the topic of "Revealing Rachel: Rachel Felix and the Nineteenth-Century American Press." While at Auburn, she served as the graduate assistant for the Women's Studies Program.

Sara recently started a new job in Chattanooga as the director of the Transformation Project, an advocacy and intervention program addressing issues of violence against women at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga.

Margaret Diane Sankey (Auburn History Ph.D., 2002), wrote her dissertation, "Jacobite Prisoners of the 1715 Rebellion," under the direction of Professor Daniel Szechi.

Dr. Sankey is a professor in the History Department of Minnesota State University, Moorhead, and recently published her first book, Jacobite Prisoners of the 1715 Rebellion: Preventing and Punishing Insurrection in Early Hanoverian Britain (Ashgate, 2005).

Dr. Sheri Marie Shuck-Hall received her master’s and doctorate degrees in history from Auburn University (2000). She wrote her dissertation, "Voices from the Southern Borderlands: The Alabamas and Coushattas, 1500-1859," under the direction of Robin Fabel. Her areas of specialty are American Indian studies, colonial American history, and public history/museum studies.

Her most recent publication is a history of the Alabama and Coushatta Indians, a southeastern tribe who migrated from present-day Alabama to East Texas over three centuries (1050-1865). The book, entitled Journey to the West: The Alabama and Coushatta Indians (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), is available at http://www.oupress.com/bookdetail.asp?isbn=978-0-8061-3940-1.

Shuck-Hall's current project is co-editing with Robbie Ethridge (University of Mississippi) a volume of essays connecting the fall of the pre-contact Native Mississippian world to the beginnings of European contact. The book, entitled Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone: The European Invasion and Regional Instability in the American South is in press and scheduled to be released by the University of Nebraska Press in Fall 2009.

Shortly after receiving tenure and promotion as a history professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Shuck-Hall moved to Newport News, Virginia, where she accepted a position at Christopher Newport University as an associate professor of history. As the Colonial American/American Indian specialist, she teaches a variety of courses with a special emphasis on America 's indigenous history and culture. In her spare time, she enjoys taking full advantage of living in "America 's historic triangle" by visiting often the historic sites in Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown. She and her husband just welcomed their first-born son, Lochlan, in 2008.

Delane C. Tew (Auburn History Ph.D., 2003) wrote her dissertation, "From Local Society to Para-Denomination: Woman's Missionary Union, 1890-1930," under the direction of Professor J. Wayne Flynt. She taught at Judson College in Marion, Alabama before assuming her current position teaching history in the Religion Department at Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee.

She received her B.A. from Samford University and her M.Rel.Ed. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Kristine M. Wirts (Auburn History Ph.D., 2003) wrote her dissertation, "From the Pulpit to the People: Protestant Ideology and Rhetoric during the French Wars of Religion," under the direction of Professor Donna Bohanan.

She is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas Pan American in Edinburg, Texas.