Matthew J. Grow, a specialist in American cultural and religious history, is an assistant professor of history and director of the Center for Communal Studies (Link:  www.communalcenter.org) at the University of Southern Indiana.  He teaches a broad range of courses in United States history, including U. S. History to 1865; American Religious History; the Early American Republic; the Civil War; War, Memory, and American History; Reforming America (a senior seminar on social reformers); and Utopia. 

Grow’s recent book, “Liberty to the Downtrodden”: Thomas L. Kane, Romantic Reformer (Yale University Press, 2009) (Link: http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300136104), uses Kane’s life as an antislavery activist, defender of the Mormons, and Civil War general to examine the intersection of partisan politics, religion, and social reform during the nineteenth century.   He has published articles in the Journal of the Early Republic, Church History, American Nineteenth-Century History, Journal of Mormon History, BYU Studies,and Utah Historical Quarterly on topics ranging from the mutual perceptions of Catholics and Mormons to the cultural of honor to the memory of the Civil War.  Along with Terryl Givens, Grow is currently writing a authored biography of the early Mormon leader Parley P. Pratt for Oxford University Press.  He received his PhD in American history from the University of Notre Dame in 2006.

Phone:  464-1971

Office:   LA2009

Email:   mjgrow

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