Dr. Doug Sofer

About Me

We live in strange times.

The discipline of history gives us the tools we need to understand just how unusual the world of today is. For that reason I created a history podcast called You Are A Weirdo, about how history helps us all understand the strangeness of now. I designed this project, along with a book draft I have written with the same name, to share the insights of the historical discipline with as wide an audience as possible. It’s about understanding how we know what we know about the past and why that process is so different from the two-dimensional way that history is sometimes portrayed to the public.

Many of us learned—incorrectly—that history is just a passive act of memorizing factoids that other people supply to us. Yet history as a discipline is an active practice of exploring and interpreting evidence from years gone by. In other words, real history requires that students think freely and understand the past, developing the tools you need to think for yourself. As a college focused on whole-person, liberating education, Maryville College understands how history is part of this process of helping people become well-rounded individuals. For that reason I am proud to have taught here over the past two decades.

Through those years, I have developed and taught a very wide variety of classes. This breadth begins with my graduate school background; I hold a Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, where I specialized in the history of Latin America and picked up additional teaching fields in African and U.S. history. Thanks to a Fulbright Fellowship, I lived for a life-changing year in Bogotá, Colombia, where I conducted my dissertation research. Living abroad provided me with new perspectives and greater empathy for those who live far from their places of birth.

My teaching builds from those above experiences. I offer classes on Latin American, African, U.S., European, and world history. I have also built many thematic classes that offer other twists on the past, including material-histories such as, “A History of Latin America through Food,” “Drugs: A Global History,” and “A History of Firearms.” I have taught classes on the theories and practices of nationalism, on revolutions in Latin America, on people of Latin American origin living in the United States, an offering about the contexts of the U.S. Constitution, and many others.

I also love teaching students outside of a traditional classroom environment. I was the founding coordinator of the Great Smokies Experience, a profound, residential environmental studies class for high school students that takes place in the Great Smoky Mountains. I have also led a half-dozen travel-study courses, accompanying students to Ghana, Germany and the Dominican Republic. Closer to home, I took MC students to the Big Apple in “A History of Immigration in New York City.”

Finally, I have assumed a number of leadership roles, both on and off campus. I was the director of our distinctive Maryville College Works program, I served as president of the Southeast World History Association, and I am currently a member of the board of directors of a community group called Welcoming Immigrant Neighbors, Blount County.

If you have more questions about my background, view my CV. Please feel free to email me if you need to get in contact with me, and thanks for stopping by.