Dr. Chris Schutz

Professor and Chair, History Department

Honors Program Director

Co-Chair, Campus Diversity Council

Education

Ph.D., History, University of Georgia

M.A., History, University of North Carolina Charlotte

B.A., Philosophy, Loyola University, New Orleans

Expertise

• 20^th Century American History, especially 1960s and 1970s
• African American Freedom Struggle
• History of the American South
• History of American Cinema
• History of Modern China

Publications

“Going to Hell to Get the Devil”: The 1972 Charlotte Three Trial and the Fate of the Freedom Struggle in a Sunbelt City.  Book Manuscript under contract. (Making the Modern South series, Louisiana State University Press).

Jackie Robinson: An Integrated Life.  Library of African American Biography series, Rowman and Littlefield Press, May 2016.

“The Burning of America: Race, Radicalism, and the Charlotte Three Trial in 1970s North Carolina.”  The North Carolina Historical Review, January 1999.

More about Dr. Schutz

Born and raised in New Orleans, Dr. Schutz graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy, and then spent two years in California as part of a religious volunteer program (working at a food bank and an AIDS agency). He then worked four and a half years as a juvenile hall chaplain in Oakland, California. The issues he encountered in his community work formulated the questions he sought to explore as he entered graduate school studies. After completing a master’s degree at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in American history, he moved on to attain his Ph.D. at the University of Georgia in 1999. For six months of that time, Schutz also worked as a researcher on a Watergate documentary, reporting to former Nixon administration chief domestic adviser, John Ehrlichman. He arrived at Tennessee Wesleyan in 2000.

Specializing in the study of race and southern history as well as American social and cultural history in the 1960s and 1970s, Schutz is the author of Jackie Robinson: An Integrated Life about the Hall of Fame baseball player and civil rights activist.  The Nation magazine asserts, “For someone whose story has been told countless times, it is remarkable how little we know about the actual Jackie Robinson: the person who saw himself as a servant to the Black Freedom Struggle and, as he said, ‘to the mass.’ J. Christopher Schutz fills this gap in a manner that is utterly indispensable. It is a must read for people who like their history whole.”

Dr. Schutz is currently completing “Going to Hell to Get the Devil”: The 1972 Charlotte Three Trial and the Fate of the Freedom Struggle in a Sunbelt City (now under contract with LSU Press), which probes the question of the causes of the Civil Rights Movement’s decline through the prism of a controversial 1972 trial against Black Power activists. The case was so scrutinized for the government’s questionable tactics that the Charlotte Three were named political prisoners by Amnesty International.

Schutz teaches a variety of courses on American history (particularly on aspects of the twentieth century) including “The Reagan Revolution: The Conservative Transformation of American Politics and Culture, 1964– Present,” “‘Like Writing History with Lightning’: History of American Cinema,” “The Rise and Fall of American Liberalism: 1960-1980,” “Stories of Freedom: Civil Rights Movement Biography,” and “Race and Justice in 20^th Century America” (which examines the historical context for the Black Lives Matter movement). His courses on non-Western history continue to expand, including “20^th Century World History” (which explores how the legacy of colonialism helped lead toward the tragedy of 9/11) and “History of Modern China” (which follows the journey of how China rose from its oppression during the age of imperialism to its role as a 21^st century superpower).

Courses Offered

▪ The Rise and Fall of American Liberalism: U.S. Social and Cultural History: 1960-1980
▪ “The Reagan Revolution”: The Conservative Transformation of American Politics and Culture, 1964-Present
▪ Race and Justice in 20^th Century America
▪ “Stories of Freedom”: Civil Rights Movement Biography
▪ “Consensus America”: U.S. History, 1945-1960
▪ “Like Writing History with Lightning”: History of American Cinema
▪ U.S. History, 1914-1945
▪ History of Modern China
▪ 20^th Century World History
▪ Seminar: The New South since WWII
▪ U.S. History to 1877
▪ U.S. History Since 1877