Lendol G. Calder

Professor of History

• Phone: 309-794-7679
• Email: LendolCalder@augustana.edu
• Office: Old Main 325

A native of Texas, Lendol Calder's bachelor of arts degree is from the University of Texas at Austin where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1980.

A scholar of the history of American consumerism, Calder's 1999 book "Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit" was hailed by the Wall Street Journal as "deliciously seditious" for the ways it inverted common assumptions about the meaning of credit in American life.

Calder's scholarship also appears in "Thrift and Thriving in America: Capitalism and Moral Order from the Puritans to the Present" (Oxford, 2011) and "The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption" (Oxford, 2012).

An accomplished teacher, Calder is also a leader in the growing movement to bring scholarly modes of inquiry to teaching and learning in higher education. In 1999, he was chosen by the Carnegie Foundation to be a Fellow at the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Calder's research, published in the March 2006 issue of the Journal of American History, examines the problem of "coverage" in introductory courses and is part of a larger effort to forge a new "signature pedagogy" for the discipline of history.

His work as a Carnegie Scholar has made him a popular speaker, presenter, and consultant on topics related to historical thinking and the teaching of undergraduates.

His current consulting projects include serving on the test committee for the College Board's Subject Test in US History and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Measuring College Learning Project (MCL). 

Dr Calder enjoys mountaineering and backcountry skiing and is often spotted on the roads preparing for his next marathon or ultramarathon.