history department
Paul Hillmer is a professor of American history at CSP. He earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Minnesota on 11 April, 2001. He wrote his dissertation on various progressive movements in Cleveland, Ohio .
His commissioned history,The Cleveland YMCA: Reflection on 150 Years to a Community, was published in 2004. He was then recruited by the Minneapolis YMCA to write a 140-year history of their youth development programs. The resulting book, Breaking New Ground, Building Strong Lives, was published in 2006.
By the spring of 2006 he returned to his long-shelved Hmong Oral History Project, started in 2001 with the invaluable assistance and leadership of Tou Thao, Peter Vang, Mai Neng Vang, Youa Vang, and others. He was awarded a "Save Our History" grant by the History Channel in July 2006, and used it to create a six-part documentary ("From Strangers to Neighbors") examining the Hmong people and their resettlement in the Twins Cities. He has just completed a book based on the 200-plus interviews he and his students collected. A People's History of the Hmong, published by Minnesota Historical Society Press, is scheduled for release on December 15, 2009.
|