The Modern Scholar Podcast

My guest today is Crystal Gates! Crystal serves as the Executive Director of the William F. Laman Public Library in North Little Rock, Arkansas. She is building upon their past successes with innovative, patron-centric services, and relevant curriculum and resources. Crystal also served as Director of the Jackson Parish Library in Jonesboro, Louisiana. Under her leadership, JPL was named one of the best libraries in the nation as a 3 Star Library two years in a row (2014 and 2015 Library Journal Index of Public Library Services). Gates has a long history of leading by serving both professionally and in civic organizations. She is a fellow Past-President of the Arkansas Library Association, President-Elect of the Southeastern Library Association, Treasurer for the advocacy group Advocates for All Arkansas Libraries, and serves in many other roles as well. As a speaker at library conferences, Crystal shares both her successes and lessons learned from implementing new services, directing capital projects, and advocating for libraries. Crystal holds a Masters of History from Louisiana Tech University and a Master of Library and Information Science from Louisiana State University.

Today I have a very special guest - Dr. Paul J. Springer. Dr. Springer is the Chair of the Department of Research and a full professor of comparative military studies at the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. He holds a PhD in military history from Texas A&M University. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including America’s Captives: Treatment of POWs from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror; Military Robots and Drones: A Reference Handbook; Transforming Civil War Prisons: Lincoln, Lieber, and the Laws of War; Cyber Warfare: A Reference Handbook; and Outsourcing War to Machines: The Military Robotics Revolution. In addition, he has published hundreds of shorter pieces, on a variety of subjects including military history, terrorism, strategy, technology, and military robotics. Dr. Springer is a Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the series editor for both the History of Military Aviation and Transforming War series, produced by the U.S. Naval Institute Press. Currently, he is completing a collective biography of the West Point Class of 1829. PJ has also been a very important mentor in my life, not only with regard to early scholarly engagement and conference, but also helping me navigate the academic publishing process! 

My guest today is Victoria Taylor! Victoria is an award-winning aviation historian based at the University of Hull and Sheffield Hallam University, where she recently defended her PhD thesis on the Luftwaffe and National Socialism in the Third Reich. Her main historical focus is on British and German aviation during the interwar period and the Second World War. In recognition of her PhD research, she was awarded the 2020 Royal Air Force Museum Doctoral Academic Prize in 2021. She also completed her Masters in Historical Research on Britain’s wartime and post-war mythologization of Operation CHASTISE – better known as the “Dambusters raid” – at Hull, for which she was awarded the Royal Air Force Museum’s RAF Centenary Master’s Academic Prize in 2019. In 2020, she served as narrator, co-writer, and historical consultant on Inside the Battle of Britain, the second series of the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund podcast series All Stations. This five-part series was nominated for a Best Independent Podcast award by the Radio Academy in 2021. Victoria has contributed to popular history magazines such as BBC History Extra, Iron Cross Magazine and Britain at War, along with publishing in academic journals and volumes. Since 2018, she has widely featured as an onscreen expert in history documentaries made for BBC Two, Channel 5, the Smithsonian Channel, History Hit, and SBS Australia. Victoria is an Assistant Editor of the scholarly online airpower platform From Balloons to Drones and serves on the Editorial Board of the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Journal of Aeronautical History.

*Apologies for a brief interruption in Dr. Lewis's audio. This was due to a brief unstable Internet connection and was missed in the editing process. Today's guest is Dr. Adrian R. Lewis. Dr. Lewis is the David B. Pittaway Professor of Military History at the University of Kansas. He has researched and written extensively on war, military affairs, and the Armed Forces of the United States for over twenty years. Dr. Lewis’ publications include The American Culture of War: The History of U.S. Military Force from World War II to Operation Enduring Freedom, which now in its third edition, published in 2018; as well as Omaha Beach: A Flawed Victory, published in 2001 and still considered to be the best analysis of Allied amphibious warfare doctrine in the European Theater of Operations, as well as numerous book chapters and articles. Dr. Lewis has taught at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point; the University of California, Berkeley where he served as the Professor of Military Science, and the University of North Texas, Denton where he served as the Chair of the Department of History. Lewis earned his B.A. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley; M.A. in History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; MBA from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville; and Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago. Dr. Lewis is a retired soldier in the U.S. Army. He served with the 2-1 Infantry and 2-23 Infantry, 9th Infantry Division, and the 2-75 Infantry (Ranger). He has served in Korea, Alaska, Panama, and Germany.

Welcome to the Modern Scholar podcast!  I'm glad you're here, and thank you for joining me today! Why was I inspired to create this series? Listen on and find out!  My guests today are Dr. Bill Allison and Dr. Brian Feltman, both from Georgia Southern University, and co-hosts of the wonderful podcast, Military Historians Are People, Too!  Dr. Bill Allison is a scholar of American military history, specifically the Vietnam War. He is a Professor of History at Georgia Southern University, joining the faculty there as Chair of the Department of History in 2008. After earning a BA and MA in History at East Texas State University in 1989 and 1991, he completed his Ph.D. in history at Bowling Green State University in 1995. He then taught at the University of Saint Francis (Indiana) before joining the History Department at Weber State University from 1999-2008. During the 2002-2003 academic year, he was Visiting Professor in the Department Strategy and International Security at the USAF Air War College and later served as Distinguished Professor of Military History at the USAF School for Advanced Air and Space Studies from 2010-2011. He also served two years as the General Harold K. Johnson Visiting Chair in Military History at the US Army War College (2012-2014). He is a former Trustee and Vice-President of the Society for Military History and has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Military History as well as editor for Routledge’s Critical Moments in American History series. He has also served on the Department of the Army Historical Advisory Committee and was awarded the Army’s Outstanding Civilian Service Medal in 2014. Since 2019, he is the series editor for the Modern War Studies series at the University Press of Kansas. His numerous books include The Gulf War, 1990-1991 from Palgrave MacMillan, My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War from Johns Hopkins, and Military Justice in Vietnam: The Rule of Law in an American War from Kansas. Dr. Brian Feltman is an Associate Professor of History and Assistant Chair of the Department of History at Georgia Southern University, where he joined the faculty in 2012. He completed his BA and MA at Clemson University and his PhD at the Ohio State University. As a specialist in Modern Germany, Dr. Feltman completed a post-doctorate fellowship at the University of Cologne in Germany, and has received multiple research grants from German institutions. His first book, The Stigma of Surrender: German Prisoners, British Captors, and Manhood in the Great War and Beyond from the University of North Carolina Press received the Edward M. Coffman Dissertation Prize from the Society for Military History, which is awarded annually to recognize the best dissertation in military history. Dr. Feltman has since served on the Coffman Prize Committee. Additional works include chapters in edited volumes – most recently a contribution to Useful Captives: The Role of POWs in American Military Conflicts from Kansas, edited by Daniel Krebs and Lorien Foote, as well as Finding Common Ground: New Directions in First World War Studies from Brill in 2010 and edited by Michael Neiberg and Jennifer Keene.

Welcome to the Modern Scholar podcast!  All around the world there are individuals doing great things — asking great questions, conducting meaningful research, innovating, and building better communities. In this series we interview librarians, scholars, and community leaders who are not only performing cutting edge work, but share the same passion for educating, encouraging, and empowering those around them. Thank you for listening, and please consider subscribing as we build a community of modern scholars, just like you. Let’s do this!