Courses Taught

• HIS 150: American Experience
• HIS 151: United States History to 1870
• HIS 376: History at the Movies
• HIS 450: Internships
• HIS 451: Women in America
• HIS 455: U.S. Intellectual History
• HIS 474: Religion in America
• HIS 400: Research Seminar
• SSC 331: Secondary Social Studies Methods
• EDS 411/412: Student Teaching Internship
• HIS 553: Rise of the New Nation
• HIS 601: Readings in Religion in America
• HIS 650/651/652: Graduate Research Seminar
• HIS 690: Independent Study
• HIS 691: Thesis Supervision

About Me

Dr. Gedge has been teaching history for 45 years, the last 18 here at West Chester University. She continually challenges herself to incorporate innovative and interactive teaching strategies into her courses. Last year, she taught her HIS 474 Religion in America course as a hybrid Distance Education course. She incorporated a three-week role-playing simulation into her HIS 451 Women in America course. Next spring, she plans to build an interactive map of the Chester County religious built environment with HIS 474 Religion in America students.

Dr. Gedge regularly teaches SSC 331 Teaching Secondary Social Studies Methods and supervises student teachers in the field. She encourages their use of student-centered and authentic teaching strategies.

Dr. Gedge's research on women and religion resulted in the monograph, Without Benefit of Clergy: Women in the Pastoral Relationship in Nineteenth-Century American Culture (Oxford, 2004). More recently, she has collaborated with the Chester County Historical Society in their quilt documentation oral histories, exhibition, and publication, Layers: Unfolding the Stories of Chester County Quilts (CCHS, 2009). In the last few years, she has collaborated with graduate students and Dr. Helen Schroepfer, Chair of Philosophy, to construct the digital archive Documenting Diversity: Religious Perspectives in Oral History.