Biography

Dr. William Watson, professor of history, teaches courses on world civilization, medieval studies, Middle East history and politics, and Russian history. He studied under Alexander Riasanovsky and Edward Peters at the University of Pennsylvania, and his research interests include medieval cross-cultural topics (convergences in the history of the West, the Islamic world, and Russia) and 20th century international relations in the era of World War II and the Cold War.  
 
He is the director of the Duffy's Cut Project. He was Commonwealth Speaker for the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, 2006-2007, and was the recipient of the Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award at Immaculata for the year 2006-2007.
 
He is author of several books:

• The Ghosts of Duffy's Cut (Praeger, 2006)
• Tricolor and Crescent: France and the Islamic World (Praeger, 2003)
• The Collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union (Greenwood, 1998)

                       
Some of his published articles in medieval history have been reprinted by De Re Militari, the medieval military history society:

• "Ibn al-Athir on the Rus: A Commentary and Translation," in Canadian-American Slavic Studies v. 35., no. 4 (Winter, 2001), pp. 423-438.
• "The Battle of Tours-Poitiers Revisited," in Providence: Studies in Western Civilization v. 1, no. 2 (Fall, 1993), pp. 51-68

 
Other articles are available online:

• "The Sisters of Charity, the 1832 Cholera Epidemic in Philadephia, and Duffy's Cut," in U.S. Catholic Historian, v. 27, no. 4 (Fall, 2009), pp. 1-16
• "Arabic Perceptions of Russia's Christian Conversion," in Albert Leong, Ed.  The Millennium: Christianity and Russia, 988-1988 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1990), pp.33-40  

Publications

Education

Ph.D., M.A., University of Pennsylvania; B.A., Eastern College