Dr. J. Russell Hawkins
Acting Dean of John Wesley Honors College, Professor of Humanities and History
Russell (Rusty) Hawkins is a graduate of Wheaton College (IL). After earning a Master's degree in American History from Montana State University, Rusty served for a year with AmeriCorps as a literacy program coordinator in the public schools of Boston, Massachusetts. He earned his doctorate in American History from Rice University in 2009 and took a position in the John Wesley Honors College that same year. Rusty teaches “What is the Good Life?” and “Wisdom, Culture, Justice Through the Ages II: Slavery and the Making of the Modern World” in the honors college, as well as American history courses in the Social Science Division. The students of Indiana Wesleyan awarded Rusty “professor of the year” in 2012.
Rusty is a scholar of race and religion in recent America and the author of The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy (Oxford University Press, 2021), which explains how white Christians' theology informed and shaped their resistance to the civil rights movement in the South. Rusty received research grants for this book from the Southern Baptist Library and Archives, Baylor University's Institute for Oral History, the University of South Carolina's Institute for Southern Studies, and Indiana Wesleyan University's Lilly Scholarship Fund.
Rusty is also the co-editor of Christians and the Color Line: Race and Religion after Divided by Faith (Oxford University Press, 2013). This book was drawn from papers delivered at a 2010 conference that Rusty organized at Indiana Wesleyan University to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith's book, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America.
Rusty is currently researching a writing a religious biography of former Alabama governor, George C. Wallace.
Rusty and his wife, Kristi, have two sons, Caleb and Micah, and the family is currently trying to visit every National Park in the United States. In addition to traveling with his wife and boys, Rusty enjoys reading (obviously), running (not as often as he should), and following his favorite sports teams (the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals, and the Kansas Jayhawks).