Office:  TMH 220
Email:  et19@txstate.edu
Phone:  512.245.2177

Curriculum Vitae

Ellen D. Tillman is an assistant professor in history with a PhD from University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Her field is Latin American history with an emphasis on military institutions, military-civil relations, U.S. interventions, and guerrilla warfare.

Dr. Tillman’s research has focused on 20th-century U.S. interventions in the Caribbean region and how these interventions shaped Latin American development, U.S. foreign policy, and U.S. naval power. Her dissertation examined the U.S. military occupation of the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), arguing that the interaction of growing U.S. naval power and the actions of the occupied population drastically reshaped both the U.S. approach and Dominican society. Her current research analyzes how U.S. Army officers’ experience on the frontier in the late nineteenth century—especially in the formation of ideas about race—affected their interventions in Central America and their interactions with Central American populations and military groups.

Before coming to Texas State University, Dr. Tillman taught at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Courses Taught

HIST2320 (2312) Western Civilization 1715 to Date
A general survey of western civilization from the Treaty of Utrecht to the present.

HIST 4368 War and Society
A study of the relationship of war with social and cultural institutions from the 18th century to the present. This course examines the ways in which the military has shaped culture and society—and the ways in which culture and society have shaped the military. In particular, this course traces change in technology and identity as they relate to warfare and the military institution.