Andrew Bell

  • Visiting Assistant Professor of History

Areas of Study

Education

  • PhD, Boston University, 2020
  • MA, Purdue University, 2014
  • BA, University of Northern Iowa, 2011

Biography

Andrew W. Bell is a historian of modern American history, specializing in the histories of U.S. engagement with the wider world, empire, culture, science, and archaeology. His first manuscript--tentatively titled Excavating Empire: Archaeologists and American Foreign Relations, 1879-1945--is currently under contract with Oxford University Press.

At Oberlin, he offers courses on American and global history. These include Immigration in U.S. History; U.S. Foreign Policy; Beyond Indiana Jones: The History, Politics, and Culture of Archaeology; Age of Fracture: The U.S. since 1973; American Empire; and a first-year seminar on the influenza pandemic of 1918-1920.

Prior to joining Oberlin College, he taught at Amherst College, Emerson College, and Boston University. His work has been generously supported by the European Commission, the Smithsonian Institution, the American Philosophical Society, and the Forest History Society, among others.

  • Excavating Empire: Archaeologists and American Foreign Relations, 1879-1945 (peer reviewed and under contract with Oxford University Press)

  • “Situating Indy: American Archaeologists, Global Ambitions, and the Interwar Years,” in Excavating Indiana Jones: Essays on the Films and Franchise, ed. Randy Laist (McFarland Books, 2020)

  • “A Tree Grows in China: Naturalists, Nationalists, and the Responsibility of Protecting China’s ‘Living Fossil’ Redwood.” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 23, no. 3 (Winter 2016): 257-281.

Spring 2025

U.S. Foreign Policy — HIST 251

From Conservation to Climate Crisis: The Environment in Twentieth-Century American History — HIST 370

Age of Fracture: The United States since 1973 — HIST 405

Fall 2025

Pandemic: The Great Influenza in History and Memory — FYSP 080

From the Great War to the Great Depression: America in the 1920s — HIST 337

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