LTC Rory McGovern Academy Professor American Division Chief rory.mcgovern@westpoint.edu Biography LTC Rory McGovern is an Academy Professor in the Department of History at West Point, currently leading the American History Division. He commissioned from Boston College in 2005. As a field artillery officer, he held a variety of assignments in the 1st Cavalry Division and 3rd Infantry Division at every level from company fire support team up to division headquarters, including two deployments to Baghdad, Iraq. Subsequently, he served as an Instructor and Assistant Professor in the Department of History, and then as the Deputy G-5 for 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command in Kaiserslautern, Germany before returning to the department. LTC McGovern holds a BA from Boston College and earned an MA and PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His first book – George W. Goethals and the Army: Change and Continuity in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (University Press of Kansas, 2019) considers the military career of the engineer who completed the Panama Canal as a vehicle to analyze larger dynamics of change within the US Army from Reconstruction through the interwar years. Ongoing Research Projects Co-writing an article on James Webster Smith, the first Black cadet admitted to West Point, with MAJs Makonen Campbell and Louisa Koebrich.Researching two untitled article-length projects. One project concerns the American mobilization for World War I and the second explores American memory of the Revolutionary War during the late-19th century. Publications & Presentations BooksGeorge W. Goethals and the Army: Change and Continuity in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2019). Articles and Essays"The School of Experience: George W. Goethals and the U.S. Army, 1876-1907," The Journal of Military History 81:2 (April 2017): 395-424. Awarded 2018 Moncado Prize by the Society for Military History “McClure’s” and “Nativism,” in Reforming America: A Thematic Encyclopedia and Document Collection of the Progressive Era, edited by Jeffrey Johnson. New York: ABC-Clio, 2017. “‘We Will All be Wiser in a Few Days’: Woodrow Wilson, Grand Strategy, and the U.S. Army in 1917,” Journal for the Liberal Arts and Sciences 20:2 (Spring 2016): 6-26.“Organize for Intelligence: Company Intelligence Cells in COIN.” Fires Bulletin (January – February 2008): 14-18.Conference Papers“Nostalgia and Perception: Institutional Culture and Lesson Learning in the Early-Twentieth Century U.S. Army,” Annual Meeting of the Society for Military History, Jacksonville, FL. April 2, 2017.“A Cold Start: Reexamining the U.S. Army’s Stumble into War in 1917,” Annual Meeting of the Society for Military History, Montgomery, AL. April 10, 2015.“‘We Will All be Wiser in a Few Days’: The U.S. Army Stumbles into the First World War” Literature, Memory and the First World War Conference. United States Military Academy, West Point, NY. September 12, 2014.Invited Lectures “‘We Had to Improvise’: The U.S. Army in the First World War,” World War I: The War That Didn’t End All Wars Lecture Series. Center for Civic Leadership and Responsibility, Camden County College, Blackwood, NJ. November 5, 2014. Podcasts“George Washington,” Presidents are People, Too! Amazon/Audible Podcast, January 23, 2017.“Dwight D. Eisenhower,” Presidents are People, Too! Amazon/Audible Podcast, August 8, 2016.“William Henry Harrison,” Presidents are People, Too! Amazon/Audible Podcast, July 26, 2016.