Faculty

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College / Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Department of International Studies

Teaching areas

History and Political Science

Research areas

American and International Communism, maritime studies, labor history and Spanish Civil War

Education

PhD, Georgetown University,Washington,DC, 1994: MA, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana, 1987: BS, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana, 1985

Professional experience

Professor of History, University of Great Falls, (now University of Providence) Great Falls, Montana 2006-2014.

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Student Services, Montana State University – Great Falls, 2003 – 2006.

Associate Vice-President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty, American University in Bulgaria, 2001 – 2003.

Associate Professor of History, American University in Bulgaria, Division of the Arts and Humanities, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, 1994 – 2001.

Adjunct Faculty, Shepherd College, History Department, Shepherdstown, West Virginia, 1991-1994.

Memberships

Historians of American Communism, Vice-President, American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians

Contact

[email protected]

Dr. Vernon Pedersen

Professor | Head of Department

PhD in History, Georgetown University, Washington, DC

Vernon Pedersen is a specialist in the history of American and International Communism with emphasis on the maritime unions and the Spanish Civil War. His teaching areas include American and Soviet history, European history, history of the Cold War and espionage, as well as maritime history and international security. He taught at Shepherd College in West Virginia, the American University in Bulgaria and at the University of Great Falls. He is the vice-president of the Historians of American Communism and the author of The Communist Party of Maryland, 1919-1957.

Publications

“The Most Dangerous Man in Montana: Communism, Corruption and Bill Dunne,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Summer, 2017

“Sea Shelters: The Communist Party, the New Deal and Seamen’s Relief,” American Communist History, April 2016.

“It’s Hard to be Popular:The Marine Workers Industrial Union and the Coming of the Popular Front,” American Communist History, Winter 2013.

“Jerry O’Connell, Montana’s Communist Congressman,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Volume 62, Number 1, Spring 2012

“Perfect Witness: Mary Stalcup Markward and the Dilemmas of Anticommunism,” American Communist History, Summer 2009.

“Memories of the Red Decade: HUAC Investigations in Maryland,” in American Labor and the Cold War, edited by Robert Cherny and William Issell, Rutgers University Press, 2004.

"George Mink, the Marine Workers Industrial Union and the Comintern in America," Labor History, vol. 41, #3, August 2000.

“Underfunded, Understaffed and Underground: The History of the San Francisco Bureau of the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat,” Continuity, Number 26, Spring 2003.

The Communist Party of Maryland, 1919 1957, University of Illinois Press, 2001.

Conference Presentations

?Roosevelts and Radicals: Theodore, Franklin, Eleanor and the American Left Wing,? Rooseveltian Century, Leiden University, Netherlands, 30 November ? 1 December, 2017.

?American Legacy: the Impact of the Russian Revolution in the United States,? Legacy of the Russian Revolution, Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 16-18 November 2017.

?The Disillusionment of Bill McCustion,? North American Labor History Conference, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, 20-22 October 2016.

?Memories of Spain: The Civil War Diaries of Stanley Postek,? Joint Conference of the British Association for American Studies and the Irish Association for American Studies, Queen?s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 7-9 April 2016.

?Disingenuous Opponents: The Montana Council of Defense and the Trials of Bill Dunne,? British Association of American Studies Conference, Newcastle on Tyne, Northumbria, England, 9-12 April 2015.

?Rough and Dangerous Men: Seamen?s Relief in the Great Depression,? The Health and Welfare of Seafarers: Past, Present and Prospects, University of Hull, Yorkshire, England, 30 January ? 1 February, 2014

?George Hardy, George Mink and the International of Seamen and Harbor Workers: A Case of the Failure of Transnational Radicalism,? Radical Americas Symposium,Institute of the Americas, University College London, 28-29 January 2013

?It?s Hard to be Popular: The Marine Workers Industrial Union and the Popular Front.? 1935: The Reality and the Promise, Hofstra University Conference, April 7-9, 2011.

?Terminal Hearing: The House Committee on Un-American Activities and the Death of Jerry J. O'Connell,? Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.April 7-10, 2010

?Roger the Lodger: A Class Looks at One Woman?s World War Two,? Montana History Conference, Great Falls, Montana, October 15-17, 2009.

?Uncommon Witness: Mary Stalcup Markward and the Dilemmas of Anticommunism,? Missouri Valley History Conference, Omaha, Nebraska, 5 March 2004.

??The Wickedly Winding Way,? J. Edgar Hoover and the Enemy With-in,? Dialogues, the Jubilee Conference of the English Department of the University of Plovdiv, Plovdiv, Bulgaria, 1 November 2002, published in the conference proceedings.

?The Communist New Deal: Alternatives to Relief and Reconstruction in Baltimore,? Beyond the New Deal: Another Look at the Thirties, University of Paris, Center for English Studies, and the Museum of American Art, Giverny, Paris, France, 6 June 2002.

?Anger and Repentance: Ex-Communist Tales and Testimony,? 25th American Studies Seminar of the American Studies Association of Turkey, Kusadasi, Turkey, 1-4 November 2000

"Memories of the Red Decade: HUAC Investigations into Communism and Organized Labor in the State of Maryland," The Cold War at the Grassroots, Southwest Labor Studies Association conference, San Francisco, 30 April 1999

"Historical Borders: The Burden of the Past in Native American Writing and Politics," The Eighth Tampere Conference on North American Studies, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland, 24 April 1999.

"Reform or Revolution: The Comintern, the Marine Workers Industrial Union and George Mink," The American Historical Association Convention, Seattle Washington, 10 January 1998.

Awards and Honors

AUS Research Travel Grant, July 24 to July 30, funding for travel to Stanford University to review the microfilm records of the American Communist Party to research the history of the Communist Party in the State of Montana.

AUS Research Travel Grant, July 28 to 4 August 2015, funding for travel to the Tamiment Archive in NYC to research the life of Stanley Postek.

Follow-Up Grant for Teaching about Islam and the Middle East Seminar, March 30, 2010 – August 15, 2011, funding provided through the Council of American Overseas Research and the Carnegie Corporation.

State Department, Public Policy Section Grant, October 18-21, 2001, for a Bulgarian American Studies Association conference entitled “America Imagined.”

National Endowment for the Humanities Travel Grant, May June, 1993, for research at the then Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Contemporary History, Moscow.Formerly the Archives of the Central Committee of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, now the Russian State...

Other creative/research

Entries on “Bulgaria,” “The Greek Civil War,” “J. Edgar Hoover,” “Eva Peron,” and “Colonel Rudolph Able,” for Encyclopedia of the Cold War: A Political, Social and Military History, ABC-CLIO, 2007.

Entries on “Venona,” “The Smith Act,” “Walter Krivitsky,” and “The Roswell Incident” for The Historical Dictionary of the 1940s, M.E. Sharpe, Inc. 2006.

Entries on “Alger Hiss,” and “Anti-communism,” for The United States at War, ABC-CLIO, 2005.

Entries on “The Amerasia Case,” “James Jesus Angleton,” Christopher Boyce,” “Falcon and Snowman,” “Alan Furst,” “Sidney Reilly,” “Victor Suvorov,” “Whitaker Chambers,” “Harry Gold,” “Alexander Orlov,” “Harry Dexter White,” and “John Le Carre,” for American Espionage: An Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2008.