Inviting some of the nation’s leading experts to Southwest Oklahoma, USAO’s Oklahoma Civil War Symposium promotes the university while providing insight to historical concepts.
Although he has been involved with the Emerson-Weir Liberal Arts Symposium and the Giles Symposium for Citizenship and Public Service, Dr. James Finck, associate professor of history at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, felt the need to promote the university’s history department, adding the Oklahoma Civil War Symposium to the school’s calendar.
Dr. Finck has been with USAO since 2011. Before arriving at USAO, he was a lecturer at the University of Texas-Pan American, now University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, in Edinburg, Texas. He was also an instructor at Northwestern Arkansas Community College in Bentonville; and, as a grad student, taught at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
To give USAO students a better understanding of the Civil War, Dr. Finck and USAO have teamed up with the Oklahoma Historical Society, allowing students to intern at the Honey Springs Battlefield in Checotah.
Finck’s book Divided Loyalties: Kentucky’s Struggle for Armed Neutrality in the Civil War was published in 2012. That same year he co-authored Chickasha: Images of America with former USAO student Gennifer Majors.
He is currently writing a book about the university.
Dr. Finck has also just finished narration for a PBS special documentary about the Civil War’s Battle of Honey Springs, “the largest of more than 107 documented hostile encounters in Indian Territory,” according to the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Dr. Finck also serves as the vice president for the Grady County Historical Society and is active with church and school functions for both USAO and Chickasha Public Schools.
Finck’s knowledge of political history is linked to current events in his column titled, “Historically Speaking.” The column is featured in more than 100 newspapers across 11 states.