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History Department

Sarah Thuesen

Associate Professor of History


Office

Archdale-208
+1 (336) 3162287
thuesensc@guilford.edu

Biography


Sarah Thuesen has taught at Guilford College since the fall of 2012. A historian of the twentieth-century United States, she has published and presented widely on the history of race, gender, and social justice struggles in the American South.

Her book, Greater than Equal: African American Struggles for Schools and Citizenship in North Carolina, 1919-1965 (University of North Carolina Press, 2013), won both the 2013 North Caroliniana Society Book Award and the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association’s 2014 Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction.

She has interests in the fields of public history and oral history and enjoys involving students in related work. A former visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina’s Southern Oral History Program, she also has served on the North Carolina Historic Highway Marker Advisory Committee. At Guilford, she has worked closely with its chapter of the national consortium, Universities Studying Slavery, and chaired a committee that created a campus historic marker dedicated to Lavina Curry, a free Black operative on the Underground Railroad.

She values Guilford’s core mission of liberal arts education and is passionate about creating new paths for students to engage in interdisciplinary and collaborative discovery. Having taught several courses in medical and public health history during her time at Guilford, she was among the team of faculty who created Guilford’s new minor in the Health Humanities.

A former fellow of the Spencer Foundation and the National Academy of Education, she holds a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

PUBLICATIONS: BOOKS AND ARTICLES
Greater Than Equal: African American Struggles for Schools and Citizenship in North Carolina, 1919-1965. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.
“‘I Got it with the Mother’s Milk’: Guion Griffis Johnson, Southern History, and the Boundaries of Womanhood.” In North Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times, Vol. 2, ed. Michele Gillespie and Sally McMillen, 191-214. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015.
“Learning from the Long Civil Rights Movement’s First Generation: Virginia Foster Durr,” an edited and introduced oral history selection. Southern Cultures 16 (Summer 2010): 72-89.
“‘Everything Changed, But Ain’t Nothing Changed’: Recovering a Generation of Southern Activists for Economic Justice.” Southern Cultures 14 (Fall 2008): 142-152.
“Taking the Vows of Southern Liberalism: Guion and Guy Johnson and the Evolution of an Intellectual Partnership.” The North Carolina Historical Review 74 (July 1997): 284-324.

EDUCATION
Ph. D., History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2003
M. A., History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1997
B. A., History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with highest honors, Phi Beta Kappa, 1995

COURSES TAUGHT
HIST 103: United States History to 1877
HIST 104: United States History Since 1877
HIST 215: The Civil Rights Movement
HIST 221: North Carolina History
HIST 223: Gender and Power in United States History
HIST 225: African American History
HIST 250: Public Health Histories: The Case of Prohibition
HIST 250: Introduction to Public History
HIST 250: History Happening Now (co-taught with Damon Akins)
HIST/REL 250: Title IX (co-taught with Jill Peterfeso)
HIST 250: History of Medicine in America
HIST/JPS 250: Grief, Healing, and Social Change (co-taught with Sherry Giles)
FYS: History of Childhood in America
HIST 310: Epidemics in Global History
HIST 311: United States Since 1945
HIST 402: Capstone Research Seminar