Matthew A. Sutton
Associate Professor of History
Wilson-Short Hall 352 – 509-335-8374
sutton@wsu.edu
Education
Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2005
Academic & Professional Interests
Sutton teaches courses in 20th century United States history, cultural history, and religious history.
Research and Publications
Sutton is currently finishing a book tentatively entitled American Evangelicals and the Politics of Apocalypse (Harvard University Press, 2014), which examines the relationships among American evangelicalism, apocalyptic thought, and political activism during times of national crisis and war. He has written a textbook, Jerry Falwell and the Rise of the Religious Right: A Brief History with Documents, as part of the popular Bedford “History and Culture” series (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012). His first book, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Harvard University Press, 2007), won the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize from Harvard University Press, awarded annually to the best book in any discipline by a first-time author. The book also served as the basis for the Public Broadcasting Service documentary Sister Aimee, part of PBS’s American Experience series. He has published articles in Church History, the Journal of Policy History, and the Public Historian. His most recent article, “Was FDR the Antichrist? The Birth of Fundamentalist Anti-liberalism in a Global Age,” won the Organization of American Historians’ Binkley-Stephenson Award for the best article published in the Journal of American History in 2012. Sutton has also written for the New York Times.
Sutton is spending the 2012-2013 academic year as the Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History at University College Dublin (on a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant). He has also held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Sutton has been featured on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and MSNBC’s The Last Word, among many other news shows. He has lectured on religion, politics, and American culture across the US and in universities in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Poland, and Germany.