Laura Westhoff is professor and chair of the History Department at UMSL. She has published her research on U.S. Gilded Age and Progressive Era reform, democracy and social movements, the scholarship of teaching and learning history (SoTL), and the history of education. She is the author A Fatal Drifting Apart: Democratic Social Knowledge and Chicago Reform (The Ohio State University Press) which examines social constructions of knowledge and the emerging tensions between democracy and expertise in modern America and is currently working on a book on mid-twentieth century democratic practices, titled Educating for Activism (under contract with the University of Illinois Press). Her work has been published in the Journal of American History, The History Teacher, Women’s History Review, and the History of Education Quarterly. Until her current stint as department chair, she was a joint appointment in the College of Education at UMSL; she remains committed to advancing history education at all levels, in all venues. She holds a Ph.D. in U.S. History from Washington University in St. Louis, and remains always curious about the role historical understanding plays in personal and collective meaning-making and social action for the common good.
