Dr. Jarod Roll

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 28, 2007

Dr. Virginia Laas
(417) 625-9793

 

Dr. Jarod Roll

JOPLIN, MO (SNS) – Missouri Southern State University graduate Dr. Jarod Roll, originally from Mt. Vernon, Mo., has won the 2006 Best Ph.D. Dissertation Prize from the International Association of Labor History Institutions.

 

He is now teaching at the University of Sussex in England.

 

Roll received his Ph.D. in History from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. in 2006. In recognition of his award, Roll will receive a cash award of £750 (pounds sterling).

 

Roll graduated with a major in History in 2000 from MSSU. He received his Master’s Degree in History from Northwestern in 2001.

 

His dissertation is entitled, "The Road to the Promised Land: Rural Rebellion in the New Cotton South, 1890-1945." It explores how African American and white farmers created a grassroots radicalism to defend agrarian traditions against the rise of capital-intensive agriculture in the lowlands of southeast Missouri.

 

Roll’s specialty is the United States after the Civil War. His research and writing focuses on the intersection of race, work, and protest in the political economy of rural America. Parts of this research have already appeared in the Journal of Southern History, Labor History, and Radical History Review.

 

One of Roll’s first articles ever published took place in the Missouri Historical Review while he was an undergraduate at Missouri Southern State University.

 

“We’re really proud of him,” says Dr. Virginia Laas of the Missouri Southern Social Science Department. “We’re sure this will not be the last award he will be getting.”