Brief Résumé
J. William T. Youngs
Professor of History
Eastern Washington University
Robert Reid Lab 107, Eastern Washington University, Cheney, WA 99004
Phone: (509)359-6944, Fax (509)359-4275
E-Mail: jyoungs@ewu.edu
Blog and Web Site: American Realities with Bill Youngs
J. William T. Youngs
Professor of History
Eastern Washington University
Robert Reid Lab 107, Eastern Washington University, Cheney, WA 99004
Phone: (509)359-6944, Fax (509)359-4275
E-Mail: jyoungs@ewu.edu
Blog and Web Site: American Realities with Bill Youngs
Education: Harvard (B.A., 1963), Berkeley (Ph. D., 1970)
Teaching Assistant and Acting Instructor, Berkeley, 1967-1970
Kenyon College: Assistant Professor 1970-1972
Eastern Washington University: Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor, 1972-present
Youngs has taught United States history courses in a variety of fields including Colonial and Revolutionary America, the New Nation, American Environmental history, History of the American National Parks, History of Disease, Historical Writing and Editing, and Historical Research
Major Publications:
• God's Messengers: Religious Leadership in Colonial New England, 1700-1750 (Baltimore: John's Hopkins, 1976 - winner, American Society of Church History's Brewer Prize)
• American Realities: Historical Episodes from the First Settlements to the Present (two volumes -- Boston: Little, Brown, 1981; Japanese translation, 1984; Eighth Edition: Pearson, 2010)
• Eleanor Roosevelt: A Personal and Public Life (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985 – now published by Pearson – Third Edition, 2005. Also large print and Books-on-Tape editions; Romanian translation, 1997, Chinese translation forthcoming)
• The Congregationalists (Stanford, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1990)
• The Fair and the Falls: Spokane’s Expo ’74, Transforming and American Environment. (Cheney: Eastern Washington University Press, 1996 -- Washington State Governor’s Writers Award)
• Timeline author for entire world history timeline for the original version of Microsoft's multimedia encyclopedia, Encarta (1993)
Youngs has received research grants from the American Philosophical Society and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and he is a recipient of the Trustees’ Award at Eastern Washington University and the Burlington Northern Award from Eastern for excellence in teaching and research.
He was lead historian for a three-year project (2002-2005) called “Pathways to History,” funded by a recent “Teaching American History” grant from the Department of Education.
During 2004-2005 he broadcast a weekly commentary on history, teaching, and politics on KEWU at Eastern Washington.
Editor of the Pacific Northwest Forum for twenty years, he now teaches and develops Internet materials in Inland Northwest History. He wrote the lead article on Washington in 1889 for the Centennial edition of Washington Magazine. He published many book reviews in the Seattle Times as well as in scholarly journals. He was convener of the two most recent annual conferences on the Mullan Road and has delivered frequent papers at the conference.
He is currently developing an Internet site (at the URL americanrealities.com) with a historical blog and also sections on his books and classes. Interested in new media, he includes photos, films, sound clips, and “Quizlets” on the site.
Youngs has served on the Board of Trustees of the Washington Commission for the Humanities, and he has led four sessions of the American Studies Conference for Finnish Teachers, which took place in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and California, 1986-1991. In public service, he created a citizen’s rights groups for an elderly care facility in Redmond, Washington, and edited a newsletter for the family council. He is a board member for HistoryLink.org.
He was president of the Faculty Organization at Eastern Washington (2006-07) and Chair of the History Department (2007-2011) and Co-Chair of the Strategic Planning Council (2006-2009) at Eastern.
He has presented papers to the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, the Pacific Northwest History Conference, the Popular Culture Association, the American Society of Church History, and the Pacific Coast Branch of the AHA. He has lectured at the University of Washington, the University of British Columbia, Stanford University, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and several universities in Finland.
In American Realities Youngs wrote thirty essays focusing on individuals and events in American history, on topics as diverse as the death of a Puritan woman, the rise of Andrew Carnegie, and the bombing of Hiroshima. These essays were his "apprenticeship" in a new kind of historical writing which combines the evocative techniques of fiction with the scholarly research of conventional historical scholarship.
He is currently working on a book about Henry David Thoreau and recently delivered these papers relating to the subject:
• “Henry David Thoreau as Historian,” paper presented in 2010 at meetings of the Bay Area Seminar (Oakland), the Pacific Northwest Early Americanists (Seattle), and the Front Range Early American Consortium (Boise)
• “Was Henry David Thoreau a Preservationist?” paper presented in 2011 at the Front Range Early American Consortium (Cheney) and The Thoreau Society “Annual Gathering” (2012)
Youngs is particularly interested in questions of historical writing style—as suggested by this passage which he wrote in his journal while working on Eleanor Roosevelt:
“I want to tell the stories of American history as though I were among friends, sitting beside a fire....”