Stephen Sloan
Academic Interests and Research
Although I have particular areas of focus (as seen from my research and teaching interests below), my diverse projects as an oral historian allows me to research and write as a generalist in recent US history.
Education
- Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2003
- MA, Baylor University, 1998
- BBA, Baylor University, 1990
Biography
A native Texan, I studied as both an undergraduate and graduate student at Baylor University. I did my PhD work at Arizona State University in the United States Post-1945, Public History, and the American West. My first academic position was as the co-director of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage at the University of Southern Mississippi. I returned to Baylor in 2007 as a professor in the Department of History and the Director of the Institute for Oral History. I am active in local history organizations, a past president of Historic Waco Foundation and the Heart of Texas Regional History Fair. One key local initiative that I created and develop is Waco History, a website and free mobile app on local history. I am also an elder in my church here in Waco, Acts Church. In the community of oral historians, I am a past president of the national Oral History Association. My work has been funded by grants at the local, state, and national level and I have had the opportunity to present my research at many state and national meetings and abroad at conferences in Liverpool, Prague, Guadalajara, Naples, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, and Barcelona.
Books
- Stephen M. Sloan, Lois E. Myers, and Michelle Holland, eds. Tattooed on My Soul: Texas Veterans Remember World War II (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2015)
- Mark Cave and Stephen M. Sloan, eds. Listening on the Edge: Oral History and Crisis (New York: Oxford Press, 2014)— Winner of the 2015 Oral History Association Book Award.
Articles and Contributed Chapters
- "Swimming in the Exaflood: Oral History as Information in the Digital Age," in Voices from the Revolution: Oral History and Digital Humanities, eds. Mary Larson and Doug Boyd (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 175 -- 188.
- "Colliding with History: Texas Liberators of World War II Concentration Camps," Sound Historian: The Journal of the Texas Oral History Association, 15 (2013): 81 – 107.
- "On the Other Foot: Oral History Students as Narrators," Oral History Review, 40 (Summer-Fall 2012): 298 – 311.
- "Oral History and Hurricane Katrina: Reflections on Shouts and Silences," The Oral History Review, 35 (Summer-Fall 2008): 176 -- 186.
- "Irrigation and Early Hydropower Development in the Salt River Valley," The Bureau of Reclamation: Essays from the Centennial Symposium, Denver, Colorado: US Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, 2008, 375 -- 384.
Courses Taught at Baylor
- HIS 2366: History of US Since 1877
- HIS 3300: Methods in Oral and Public History
- HIS 3301: Internship in History
- HIS 4340: The United States and the War in Vietnam
- HIS 4379: The Cold War
- HIS 4380: The American West
- HIS 4388: American Environmental History
- HIS 4392: US Foreign Relations Since 1919
- HIS 5367: Seminar in Oral History