Contact
| Dept: | History |
| Email: | scordery@iastate.edu |
| Office: | 603 Ross 527 Farm House Ln. Ames IA 50011-1054 |
| Phone: | 515-294-7266 |
Bio
As Chair of the History Department I oversee the administration and management of our excellent faculty and outstanding programs. Before joining Iowa State University in 2016, I served as Department Chair for four years at Western Illinois University and for six years before that at Monmouth College in Illinois. I taught at Monmouth for a total of eighteen years, during the first seven of which I also coached the women’s soccer team. At ISU I teach Western Civilization and Sports History.
My research ranges across the modern Atlantic world. My next book, Gilded Age Entrepreneur: The Curious Life of American Financier and Railroader Albert Benton Pullman, is scheduled for publication in September 2025 by Cornell University Press. Pullman designed and marketed Pullman railroad cars and hired the first Black Pullman porters. He personified small-time investors creating corporations by forging connections, issuing shares, and praying for profit. His investments invariably failed but his life was unwaveringly interesting.
Gilded Age Entrepreneur is my fourth book. My first, British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), studied working-class voluntary insurance associations. Following this was Mother Jones: Raising Cain and Consciousness (University of New Mexico Press, 2010), an introduction to the American labor movement through the life of an amazing organizer. The Iron Road in the Prairie State: The Story of Illinois Railroading (Indiana University Press, 2016) was the first state-focused history of the railroad industry in Illinois and won the George W. and Constance M. Hilton Book Award from the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society. I am also co-editor of a book of essays, Building Positive Peace (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023).
Born in east London, I am lifelong fan of the English Premier League team Tottenham Hotspur and played soccer for Northern Illinois University and Christ Church College, Canterbury.