History professor hopes students will learn from past to better future
Tiffany Sanders
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Dr. Donna Cooper Graves is an associate professor of history
here at the University of Tennessee at Martin. Dr. Graves is originally from
the Kansas City area, but has lived in numerous cities around the U.S. She began
teaching at UTM in August of 1997. She teaches American social and cultural
history, American women's history, public history, and special topics courses
in the history of childhood and family and the westward movement. Next spring
she is planning to offer a course on the history of sexuality.
Dr. Graves has had a great appreciation for history since she was a child. Her
father loved history as well and always took the family on vacations where most
of their photographs are of the kids standing in front of historical markers.
In college, she was influenced by and admired several of her history
professors.
She wants her students to understand the past, both the good and the bad that
has shaped human history.
"Rather than seeing history as information about the past, I want my
students to understand that the lessons of history can make them better human
beings in the present and thus they can assert a positive influence on the
future," she said.
In her classes, she devotes a lot of time to discussion. Each semester, Dr.
Graves uses different books for her classes. She wants to find books that are
interesting both for her and for her students. Getting students involved in
discussion helps them to develop skills in leadership and critical thinking,
both needed in any sort of profession. She is the faculty advisor for Phi Alpha
Theta, the history honor society.
Dr. Graves calls herself a "culture vulture." She is especially
attracted to art, modern ballet, opera and theater. Season tickets to Ballet
Memphis and the Paducah Symphony satisfy her while in Martin, but she
especially enjoys traveling to New York City and Los Angeles to soak up the
best in the arts.
When asked, "If you could do anything else besides teach, what would it
be?" she very quickly said she would be an art museum curator. She really
has a passion for art and art history.
"I have been in almost every major art museum in almost every large city
in the United States and some in Western Europe," Graves said.
She received her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in European
history at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. After graduating from there,
she attended the University of Kansas where she completed her PhD in American
history in 1994.
She has taught at many colleges including Montana State University, Central
Michigan University, Missouri State University (formerly Southwest Missouri
State), and Truman State University (formerly Northeast Missouri State). At
Central Michigan University, Dr. Graves was the director of the women's studies
program for four years.
In 2006, she published an edited collection of essays on infanticide with a
former colleague at Central Michigan, entitled Killing Infants: Studies in the
Worldwide Practice of Infanticide. Causing the death of infants less than
twelve months, but usually shortly after birth, is how infanticide is defined.
While horrific, this act has occurred across the planet and throughout human
history. In the last several decades, it has become a research area for growing
numbers of scholars in many fields. They are currently working on what may be a
two-volume specialized encyclopedia on infanticide.