Position
Academic Background
Sample Courses   
Teaching Philosophy
Research & Interests   
Notable Academic Appointments & Awards
Publication Highlights   
Selected Scholarly Presentations

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• Professor of History

Academic Background        

• Fordham University, Ph. D., 1974
• Fordham University, M.A., 1964
• Providence College, A.B., 1962

• Development of Western Civilization
• Medieval England; Modern Britain
• Dimensions of Art (Honors course) 
• Seminars on the Age of Roosevelt (1932-45) and on World War II
• History of the British Empire  (graduate course)

Teaching Philosophy

The aim of my teaching is to help students to open their minds, to encourage them to think with greater originality, and to enable them to recognize the important questions which will prompt them to plumb the depths of issues of vital importance. History has a methodology of investigation which directs the researcher toward sound and valuable discoveries. I try to promote this method and a spirit of inquiry, and I emphasize the need for precise evidence in building an explanation of an event or phenomenon. However, beyond the research and the evidence, there has to be a well-focused and extended analysis in order to make our explorations of the past useful and valuable. So my approach to teaching history ultimately concentrates on developing students' powers of analysis. I think that, in college, students need to be taught not so much what to think but how to think. I am comfortable with lecture and seminar formats, and I enjoy team-teaching because my interactions with colleagues not only enliven my own experience but also provide the students with a model for intellectual discourse.

I love teaching! Not every day, but nearly every day. There is a good deal of mystery about the process, for students do not always reveal precisely what they are taking away from their classes. However, there is a genuine joy for the teacher who recognizes lights going on in the minds of his or her students. Sometimes I do not succeed, but the goal is always there, to be attacked again. In the long run, what counts most is their recognition of truth. Often truth hides and the investigation is really difficult, both for me and for them. But to settle for any lesser goal is to concede away much of the value of teaching.

Research & Interests

The dominant interests of my life have been history and music. While my graduate work was concentrated in American History, my doctoral dissertation was in the field of Anglo-American diplomacy, and that became a bridge for me into British History which has gradually become the foremost interest of my research and writing. During two sabbaticals spent at Cambridge University, I focused my work on prominent figures in British life in the Victorian era. At the moment, I am finishing the ninth chapter of a joint biographical study of William Jardine and James Matheson, Scottish merchants, whose careers in East Asian trade were merged in 1832 when they founded a company (Jardine Matheson) which became the greatest British trading corporation in that part of the world.  It was an agency house, representing the interests of merchants in Britain and India, and the most dynamic element in their trade was India opium, marketed along the south coast of China. Their business acumen brought them great wealth and fame. Both served in Parliament after returning to Britain in the early Victorian period.

 My interests in music began with keyboard studies (piano and organ) during my school years, but have focused on choral singing for most of my life. I have been a member of the choir at St. Mary's Cathedral, Fall River, for a half century! And for the past eleven years I have been singing with a chamber choir named Sine Nomine, which concentrates on performance of sacred music, and performs at various venues in southeastern New England. Music has been one of the great pleasures of my life and one of the strongest bonds of my family, as my wife is a musician and all our children have strong musical interests.

Notable Academic Appointments and Awards

• Chair, History Department, Providence College, 1994-2000
• Chair, President's Forum on Culture and Values (distinguished guest speakers series), Providence College,  1986-1997
• Visiting Fellow, St. Edmund's College, Cambridge University, 1993
• Director, Liberal Arts Honors Program, Providence College, 1970-1987

Publication Highlights

• Currently in the final stages of a book-length manuscript on the lives and careers of William Jardine and James Matheson, founders of Jardine Matheson Company, the British trading giant in East Asia.
• Articles on the following persons in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004)
  • William Jardine (1784-1843)
  • Sir James Matheson, Bart. (1796-1878)
  • Hollingworth Magniac (1786-1867)
  • Sir Alexander Matheson, Bart. (1805-1886)
  • Sir Robert Jardine, Bart. (1825-1905)
  • Sir John Keswick (1906-1982)
• "William Jardine (1784-1843," Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons (from the beginnings to 1985).  Oxford University Press, 1993.
• "Sir James Matheson, Bart. (1796-1878)," Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons (from the beginnings to 1985) . Oxford University Press, 1993.
• "Macaulay, Mummery, and Mystery: Christmas 1838, at Rome," Catholic Historical Review, vol. 74, no. 4, October 1988.
• "Whitehall and the Ghost of Appeasement, November 1941," Diplomatic History vol. 3, no. 2, Spring 1979.
• Books reviews for The Historian and Providence: Studies in Western Civilization

Selected Scholarly Presentations and Activities

• Forthcoming conference paper for the meeting of The Historical Society , to be held at Chapel Hill, N.C. in June 2006.
• Conference papers for the North American Conference on British Studies (Denver, 1974, New York, 1990), World War II Conference (Siena College, 1990)
• Honors society induction lecture on historians' standards of  integrity, Roger Williams University, April 2002.
• Commencement address, Bishop Connolly High School, Fall River, Massachusetts, June 2000.
• "Britain Alone, 1940-41" Providence Chapter of the English Speaking Union, 1992.

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