Wesley R. Bishop

Associate Professor of Public and American History
Stone Center 314
wrbishop@jsu.edu 

Wesley R. Bishop is Associate Professor of Public and American history at JSU. He received his BA in history and psychology from Ohio University (2009), his MA in history of social movements and labor studies at Indiana State University (2014), and his PhD in American history from Purdue University (2018). Prior to coming to JSU, Dr. Bishop was the Eugene V. Debs Fellow at ISU.

Dr. Bishop’s research interests are primarily in public history, specifically public sphere studies. He is interested in how social movements use conceptions of “the public” and public space to challenge, reshape, and protest society. His dissertation to book project, “The Long March of Coxey’s Army: The Path of Protest from Populism to the New Deal,” examines how the 19th century American populist movement reconceptualized concepts of “the people,” currency, and political protest to create a new relationship between the people and the federal government.

His second book, co-authored with sociologist Bessie Rigakos, is entitled “Liberating Fat Bodies: Social Media Censorship and Body Size Activism.” It examines how activists in the body size movement— fat liberation, body positivity, and body neutrality— have used social media platforms to promote their movements and gain greater media representation. However, as the research shows these activists have also faced harassment, censorship, and banning for their activism and body sizes. The book questions how does the digital “public” operate in terms of a modern public sphere?

He is currently working on a book examining the 1925 wreckage and public memory of the USS Shenandoah, the United States’ first dirigible, including the ways in which local residents in Ohio salvaged, vandalized, and exhibited portions of the wreckage in makeshift museums. He is also completing a book on contemporary activism surrounding the Equal Rights Amendment.

If you are a student interested in studying public history or joining the graduate program in history, please contact Dr. Bishop.

Wesley Bishop

Courses Taught

  • American History I
  • American History II
  • Internship in Museum Studies
  • Public History
  • History of Alabama
  • Race, Community, and Memory
  • History of the US Presidency
  • Historiography and Methodology

Education

  • PhD, Purdue University (2018)
  • MA, Indiana State University (2014)
  • BA, Ohio University (2009)

Other Responsibilities

  • Contact Person for Community and Public History
  • Founding and Managing Editor of North Meridian Press

Selected Publications

Books

  • “The Long March of Coxey’s Army: The Path of Protest from Populism to the New Deal,” (Urbana Champaigne: University of Illinois Press, 2027).
  • “Liberating Fat Bodies: Social Media Censorship and Body Size Activism,” with Bessie Rigakos, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).

Articles/ Chapters in Edited Volumes

  • “Burying the Confederate Dead: Indianapolis’ Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument and the Confederacy as Memory in a Northern City,” Public Art Dialogue (2025): 1-23.
  • “Booth Tarkington: North Meridian Street, Indianapolis, Indiana,” in Lingering Inland: A Literary Tour of the Midwest, ed. Andy Oler, (Urbana-Champaigne: University of Illinois Press, 2025): 197-199.
  • “To Measure Skulls, To Measure Waists: Why We Need a Popular Understanding of the Origins of Modern Health Standards,” co-written with Bessie Rigakos, in Fat and the Body in the Long Nineteenth Century, eds. Amy Shaw and Lynn Kennedy, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2025): 41-58.
  • “William Henry Harrison, the Forever Frontier, and the Making of the Politically Imagined American Midwest,” in Presidents and Place, eds. Thomas Cobb and Olga Akroyd, (Maryland: Lexington Books, 2023): 69-84.
  • “Eugene V. Debs' Museum and the Preservation of Radical Working-Class Political Memory,” in Museums and the Working Class, ed. Adele Chynoweth (New York: Routledge, 2021): 131-144.
  • “The Forever Frontier: The Novels of Emily St. John Mandel and Ling Ma in Re-Imagining Frontier Violence,” MidAmerica: The Annual Journal of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature 46, (2019): 60-71.
  • “A Historically Shifting Sphere: The Internet as a Basis of a Public Sphere for Social Activism,” in From sit-ins to #revolutions: The changing nature of protests, Olivia Guntarik and Victoria Grieve-Williams (New York: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2019): 37-50.
  • “The Public Stage: The Working Class in Theatrical Representations and the Fear of America’s Declining Public Sphere,” South Atlantic Review 83:3, (Fall 2018): 130-149.