Topic: History
Alex Boodrookas
Derek Everett
Xiansheng Tian
Jose Quintana
Jose Quintana, M.A., is a senior lecturer in the Department of Chicana/Chicano Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He teaches Introduction to Chicano Studies as well as Survey of Chicana/o Literature. Quintana’s areas of research encompass all things cultural based, especially folklore that has been deconstructed and reinterpreted. He believes in using cultural elements such as language, art, music and food to help students connect with the personal aspects of his classes.
Adriana Nieto
Adriana Nieto, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver. She has been with the university for over 15 years, first starting out as an adjunct professor and then becoming a full-time faculty member in 2009. Her teaching and research interests include Latina spiritualities and practices; women of color feminisms; mental health among Xicanas in early 20th Century New Mexico; Chicana protestants in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands; oral history and water in the ‘West’, with special interest in acequia culture and practices in southern Colorado.
Nieto received her Ph.D. in religious and theological studies form the University of Denver Iliff School of Theology, her master’s in Latin American studies with a focus on gender studies and borderland history from the University of New Mexico and her bachelor’s in Latin American and women studies also from the University of New Mexico.
Andrew Muldoon
Andrew R. Muldoon, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of History at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He specializes in colonial South Asia, the British Empire, modern Britain and modern Ireland and is fluent in all aspects of modern British and Irish history, politics and culture.
Muldoon is the author of “Empire, Politics and the Creation of the 1935 India Act: Last Act of the Raj,” published in 2009, and his current project is a study of soldiers’ experience in India and Burma in World War II.
Muldoon received a doctorate in history from Washington University in St. Louis and masters of philosophy in European studies from Cambridge University.
Matthew S. Makley
Matthew S. Makley, Ph.D., is a professor and chair in the Department of History at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His areas of expertise include modern U.S. history, U.S. history, U.S. West, Indigenous history and Native American history.
Makley has been teaching at MSU Denver for over 10 years. He also taught courses at Arizona State University while earning his doctorate. He received the prestigious 2016 Faculty Senate Teaching Excellence Award for Tenured Faculty and a Teaching Excellence award in 2017.
Makley published a book titled “The Small Shall be Strong: A History of Lake” that was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2018. He also co-authored the book, “Cave Rock: Climbers, Courts and a Washoe Indian Sacred Site,” which was published by the University of Nevada Press in 2010 and has a current manuscript titled, “The Small Shall be Strong: A History of Lake Tahoe’s Washoe Indians,” that is being published by the University of Massachusetts Press. He also helped produce a short documentary about an Iris farm and its relationship with water in Boulder, Colorado called “Long’s Gardens: An Urban Oasis.”
Makley received his doctorate and master’s in history specializing in Native American history, and the history of the American West from California State University and a bachelor’s in history from Humboldt University.
Stephen Leonard
Stephen Leonard, Ph.D., is an emeritus professor in the Department of History at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His areas of research and expertise focus on the history of Colorado, Denver, and the United States. He is currently teaching Colorado and the Nation.
Leonard has been teaching history at MSU Denver since August 1966 and has no plans of retiring. He also served for 15 years on the Denver Landmark Commission.
Leonard has authored or co-authored nine books in his time at MSU Denver. One of them, “Trial and Triumphs,” a history of the Depression in 1930s Colorado, won several awards; another, “Lynching in Colorado, 1859-1919,” was well-received in the scholarly community. His book “Colorado: A History of the Centennial State” is a popular college-level textbook. More recently, Leonard co-authored “A Short History of Denver” in 2016.
Leonard received his doctorate in American History from Claremont Graduate School in 1971, his master’s in American Studies from the University of Wyoming in 1965, and his bachelor’s in History from Regis College in 1964.
Todd Laugen
Todd Laugen teaches American History since 1865, methods of teaching social sciences and emergence-modern U.S. 1877–1920. He has taught at MSU Denver since 2005.
Laugen’s recent publications include “The Gospel of Progressivism: Moral Reform and Labor War in Colorado, 1900–1930,” which details the fight against corporate and political corruption in Colorado during the early 20th century. Recent papers include “Worker Mobilization, Management Resistance: 1920s,” and “Struggles for the Public Interest: Organized Labor and State Mediation in the 1920s.”
He specializes in American history after 1865, including politics, labor, women and the west. As a former high school history and government teacher, Laugen remains interested in history education and the preparation of effective teachers.