Paul Michelson

I graduated from Emporia State in 1967; did an MA (1969) and a Ph.D (1975) in East European History at Indiana University. Taught at Huntington University in Northeast Indiana from 1974 to 2015. I have been fortunate enought to have three Fulbright fellowships in Romania (1971-1973; 1982-1983; 1989-1990). During the last one, the communist regime was overthrown. Some fun.

I have published over 100 articles and edited, written, or co-written several books including Romanian Politics, 1859-1871: From Prince Cuza to Prince Carol (1998) which was selected by CHOICE MAGAZINE as an Outstanding Academic Book for 1998 and was awarded the 2000 Balcescu Prize for History by the Romanian Academy.

My principal areas of research and publication include Romania in the 19th-21st Centuries, Totalitarian and post-Totalitarian societies, the History of Venice, and the work of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.

I retired as Professor Emeritus in August 2015 after 41 years of teaching at Huntington University.

My latest development is a kidney transplant June 24, which was delayed by COVID19 closing down hospitals just when we were ready to go (close to my Birthday). The donor was my youngest son and the new kidney is doing better than great so far. I celebrated my one year anniversary since the transplant in June 2021. Details on the blog on my home page at www.pmichelson.com for the perversely motivated.

I second what someone else said about the first class teachers we had at North. I remember the great examples set for us by Roy Harmon, Sid Tate, Edwin Elliott, and Gladys Mason, among others. Fun teachers, but no nonsense and took their vocations and us seriously. I won't go into what J. D. Unruh, Rick Harris, and I were up to as lab assistants for Chemistry, but I'm pretty sure we'd get arrested if we followed our curiosities today as we did then. One somehow has the idea that students today have less fun than we did in the 1960s.