Dr. Amy Dunagin, a Yale University doctoral graduate and history professor at KSU, currently teaches modern world history, modern England history and British history courses and uses her distinguished and comprehensive background to form her teaching philosophy.
Dunagin’s philosophy on history circulates around its everchanging nature. She believes that history is not fixed but instead changes over time. She believes that including the voices of more marginalized groups and moving from a Eurocentric view to a global, historical perspective is a positive step toward how we view history.
She also noted that these new narratives have gradually been making their way into primary and secondary educational course materials.
“My students come to KSU with a brighter, more nuanced historical narrative than I got in high school, but there’s still a long way to go,” Dunagin said.
She believes that the arc of history does not inevitably bend toward justice and progress, as history itself does not have agency. Therefore, in the eyes of Dunagin, the only way that history moves forward is by the direct actions of humans.
“Every single individual has the ability to change history, but not every individual has had an equal opportunity to change history in the kinds of ways that will get names into textbooks,” Dunagin said. “Having that opportunity is a privilege and using it well is a duty.”
Dunagin said that she was thrilled to be offered the job at KSU because it places importance on both teaching and research, two facets of her career that she is equally passionate about. She began teaching at KSU in fall 2017 and was excited to be able to teach her specialty, British history.
Dunagin, originally from Oklahoma, obtained a Bachelor of Arts in history and a doctorate in history and musicology from Yale University. She also participated in a postdoctoral program in which she served for two years as the managing editor of a humanities journal, “Eighteenth-Century Studies.”
Dunagin applied to Yale only because her mom made her, not expecting to get accepted.
“I’ve never been more shocked than I was when I got the [acceptance] email,” she said. “In all, I spent 14 years there, and I never stopped feeling awed and privileged to be surrounded by so many smart, passionate people.”
Dunagin did not discover her desire to teach history until late in her college career. It was her passion for history that lead Dunagin to pursue a career in academia, remarking that she “can’t imagine a more enjoyable job.”
Dunagin’s family lived in the country, with no cable access, so much of her free time was spent playing music and reading books. She grew up with aspirations to become a musician — getting accepted into an ivy league university was far from her expectations.
Dunagin still has a passion for singing as well as traveling, the outdoors, fiction and the people in the world around her. She is currently completing a book entitled “English Identity and Italian Music.”
