Jacqueline R deVries

Jacqueline R. deVries specializes in modern European and British social and cultural history. She currently holds the position of Batalden Faculty Scholar in Applied Ethics.

Her scholarly research focuses on the intersections among gender, religion, science, and social movements.  She is the author and editor of several books, including Women, Gender and Religious Cultures, 1800-1940 (Routledge, 2010), with Sue Morgan, and numerous essays and reviews in journals and edited collections.  She is completing (for Palgrave) a social history of religion in Britain that places women’s experience at the center, and is editing a 4-volume collection of primary sources on “Religion in Britain, 1790-1930” for Routledge Historical Resources. Recently she served as guest editor for a special issue of Modern Believing on “Women and Theological Modernism” (Fall 2023.)

An advocate of making history accessible to public audiences, she serves on the board of the Hennepin History Museum and recently co-curated an exhibit, “Votes for Women:  Hennepin County” on Minneapolis’s local suffrage movement. She and her students have produced several local history walking tours and are developing another for the 100th anniversary of the Hennepin Theatre Trust. She is also co-author (with Cheri Register) of Westminster Presbyterian Church’s sesquicentennial history, A Living Faith (2007.)

A creative instructor, she was the recipient of the 2021 Distinguished Contribution to Teaching from Augsburg University. She authored the Instructor’s Resource Manual for the best-selling western civilization textbook, A History of Western Society, ed. by McKay, Hill, Buckler, Crowston, and Perry, and for many years coordinated summer seminars for teachers of AP European history. A special interest in intercultural learning led her to design study-abroad trips to Germany, Poland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, and the Czech Republic.

DeVries has served in many administrative roles on campus, including Director of General Education (2012-2019), chair of the History department (2000-2009; 2023-present), and Director of the Women’s Studies Program (1997-2001.)

Education

• B.A. Calvin College
• M.A. University of Illinois-Urbana
• Ph.D. University of Illinois-Urbana

Courses

• HIS 102 — Science, Religion, and Enlightenment:  The Invention of Modernity, 1350-1815
• HIS 103 — A Global History of Europe, 1789 – 1989
• HIS 170 — Food:  A Global History (with a lab)
• HIS 200 — Why History Matters
• HIS 282 — Women’s Histories since 1848
• HIS 331 — Project Partnership (community-based learning)
• HIS 352 — The Holocaust in German History
• HIS 354 — Cultures of Empire / Cultures of Democracy:  A Multinational History of Britain, 1750-present
• HIS 400 — Seminar (various topics: 1914, 1917, 1940, 1945, 1968)
• HIS 440 — Topics (most recently:  “Gender, Science, and Medicine since 1750”)