History Faculty Bios

Dr. Anthony Amato

Anthony Amato is a professor of Social Science. He received his Ph.D. from Indiana University. At SMSU, he teaches environmental history and world history courses in the history program. He has received a TRIO award for teaching. His research interests center on intersections of culture, economy, and environment. He is the author of two acclaimed books: The Carpathians, the Hutsuls, and Ukraine: An Environmental History (2021) and The Stark Carpathians: Ritual, Text, and Authority among Ukraine’s Hutsuls (2024). He is the editor of Conservation on the Northern Plains: New Perspectives and co-editor of Draining the Great Oasis: An Environmental History of Murray County, Minnesota. Over the years, he has also authored more than a dozen articles, essays, and reviews. With an eye for the interdisciplinary social sciences, he has served as president of the World Social Science Association.

Dr. Jason Eden

Jason Eden arrived at SMSU in 2025.  He holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, a master’s degree from Northeastern University in Boston, and his doctoral degree from the University of Minnesota.  He teaches a variety of courses in United States History, including Minnesota History, United States Military History, Growing Up in America, and United States History since 1945.  Jason has multiple scholarly publications and tries to stay active in research and writing.  A lot of his recent projects have addressed the history of childhood, youth, and old age in Colonial North America and this includes a book he co-authored with his wife titled Age Norms and Intercultural Interaction in Colonial North America (Lexington, 2017).  He has also published reviews and articles that have addressed Native American history, history pedagogy, and the history of Christianity.  Jason also enjoys fishing, biking, and retro gaming.

Dr. Michael Hofstetter

Prior to arriving at SMSU in 1998, Michael Hofstetter taught at Bethany College, a small liberal arts college in Kansas. While there, he received the Mortvedt Distinguished Teacher Award and has also been granted the Fantastic Faculty Award here at SMSU. Michael Hofstetter’s main areas of interest are European History and the History of Islam. He offers the two-semester European history sequence every year and upper level courses in Roman, British, Russian, German, and Islamic History. He has presented for several years a First Year Seminar on the history of Kingship (entitled “Good King, Bad King”) and a Senior Seminar on the recent history of the Middle East. His publications include The Romantic Idea of a University, a comparative look at universities in England and Germany in the early nineteenth century.