William Katerberg


William Keterberg

Education

  • Redeemer University College, Canada
  • B.A., Calvin College, MI
  • M.A., University of Notre Dame, IN
  • M.A., Ph.D., Queen’s University, Canada

Professional experience

I am the curator of Heritage Hall, the archives for Calvin University, Calvin Theological Seminary, and the Christian Reformed Church in North America. 

I am also the director of the Mellema Program in Western American Studies. 

You can also find me in my office in the Historical Studies department in Hiemenga 472.

Biography

Over the years, to get away and relax, I’ve traveled far afield, to places like Peru and India, and tempted fate by climbing the occasional mountain and jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. My current hobbies are a little more sedate and safe—mountain biking and road biking, brewing beer, and photography. You can see some of my photography at my photography blog on WordPress or on my photography portfolio.

Academic interests

  • The North American West
  • Native American history
  • Dutch North American history
  • Rephotography
  • Digital Humanities

With Carol Higham at UNCC, I am working on a book on Senator Henry L. Dawes and his daughter Anna Laurens Dawes, both of whom were influential in promoting reform movements and legislation that promoted the acculturation of Native Americans to modern U.S. life and values.

I also am working on rephotography projects. One explores Dutch American and local history sites in West Michigan and Michigan more widely. A second will focus on Reformed churches on the Plains. Rephotography, or repeat photography, involves photographing a landscape or cityscape in its current state and comparing it to old photographs. It is a way of exploring change and continuity visually. You can see some examples here and here and here.

Finally, I am editor of Origins, the magazine published by Heritage Hall, and Origins Online, the blog of Heritage Hall.

Publications

Blogs

Book Series Editor for Wiley-Blackwell, "The Western History Series" (with Carol L. Higham)

Selected Essays

  • “Transplanting Family, Farm life, and Church,” Origins: Historical Magazine of the Heritage Hall Archives 40:1 (Spring 2022), 4-10.
  • “Navajo Voices and Christian Reformed Missions,” Origins: Historical Magazine of the Heritage Hall Archives 39:2 (Fall 2021), 36-45.
  • “Is Big History a Movement Culture?” Journal of Big History II:1 (Spring 2018), 63-72.
  • “History in the Anthropocene,” Fides et Historia 47, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2015), 155-161.
  • “The Poverty of Theory (and History): Frank Ankersmit’s Search for Historical Experience,” Fides et Historia 45, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2013).
  • “Globalizing American Creation Stories,” The Maryville Symposium: Conversations on Faith and the Liberal Arts, Theme Issue on Frontiers, Borders and Citizens: Membership in American Society 5 (2012): 7–33.
  • “The Person of the Historian,” Fides et Historia 44, no. 1 (Winter/Spring 2012): 76–81.
  • “Who Wants to Live in the Real World?” Practically Human: College Professors Speak from the Heart about Humanities Education. Grand Rapids, MI: Calvin College Press, 2012.
  • “The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the Historian’s Vocation.” In Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian's Vocation, edited by John Fea, Jay Green, and Eric Miller. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010.
  • “A Northern Vision: Frontiers and the West in the Canadian and American Imagination.” In One West, Two Myths, Volume Two: Essays on Comparison, edited by Carol L. Higham and Robert Thacker. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2007.
  • “Western Myth and the End of History in the Novels of Douglas Coupland,” Western American Literature 40, no. 3 (Fall 2005): 272–99.
  • “Redemptive Horizons, Redemptive Violence, and Hopeful History.” Fides et Historia 36, no. 1 (Summer/Fall 2004): 1–14.

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