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ANGELA FIRKUS, PH.D.
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY
Dr. Angela Firkus holds the Ph.D. from Purdue University. She teaches both United States history and Asian history courses. These include the Introduction to Historical Methods, the two-semester survey class in U.S. history, the history of women in the U.S., Native American history, and Asian civilizations.
Dr. Firkus also coordinates the Certificate in Public History program. Students interested in presenting history to a public audience can prepare to be a writer, museum director, documentary film maker, or one of many other careers by completing this 13 credit program. As part of this program, Dr. Firkus also supervises internships with the local history museum and works with the students on individual projects of interest to them.
In addition to teaching, Dr. Firkus remains active in the history profession. She and her students contribute to the blog “Women Celebrities Remembered and Forgotten.”
Email: afirkus@cottey.edu
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Publications
America’s Early Women Celebrities: The Famous and Scorned from Martha Washington to Silent Film Star Mary Fuller. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2021. https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/americas-early-women-celebrities/
“At the Factory, on the Street, and in State Institutions: Child Workers of Kansas City at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.” Missouri Historical Review 114 (October 2019): 40-63.
“’Work, Play, and Be Merry but Don’t Forget the First!’: College Women and the Founding of Phi Theta Kappa in Missouri.” Missouri Historical Review 112 (July 2018): 260-279.
“What Happened to Mary.” Reforming America: A Thematic Encyclopedia and Document Collection of the Progressive Era. pp. 742-744. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2017.
“Little Lives Saved: C.J. Nordmeyer, Missouri’s Child Labor Crusader.” Gateway: The Magazine of the Missouri History Museum. 36 (2016): 18-25.
“Fame, Gilded Age Style: A Review of Another Period.” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. 15 (April 2016): 220-221.
Organized the panel “Black, White; Urban, Rural: Working Women in Missouri History” and presented the paper “Women of the Looms: Missouri Women Working in Textile Mills at the Turn of the Century” at the Missouri Conference on History in Columbia, MO, March 9-11, 2016.
“The Find a Grave Assignment: An Experiment in Fostering Collaboration in the Classroom” Perspectives on History 52 (October 2014), 32-33.
“Joplin Threatened with Silence: The Telephone Operators’ Strike of 1902-1903” Missouri Historical Review 106 (January 2012): 75-90.
“Agricultural Extension and the Campaign to Assimilate Native Americans of Wisconsin, 1913-1935.” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 9 (October 2010) 473-502.
“The Limits of Farm Instruction in California: The Agricultural Extension Service and Non-whites, 1910-1932.” Agricultural History 84 (Fall 2010) 506-530.
Route Across the Rocky Mountains. Edited with an introduction by Angela Firkus. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2000.