Rate My Professor Elizabeth Propes

Dr. Elizabeth Propes is an Associate Professor of History at Tennessee Technological University, where she has served since 2010. Prior to joining Tennessee Tech, she was Assistant Professor of History at Mesa State College beginning in 2004. She earned her Ph.D. in modern European history from the University of Mississippi in 2003, an M.A. from Oklahoma State University, and a B.A. from the University of Mississippi. Propes specializes in France, Modern Europe, China, Africa, and historical methods. Her teaching covers European history from the Reformation through the French Revolution, modern French history, modern German history including the Holocaust, the history of China, and African history emphasizing Francophone Africa. In 2011, she introduced a new African history course and has since expanded the department's curriculum with additional modern European history offerings. She offered Western Civilization during the Maymester program in 2014 and upper-division courses in 2016 and 2017.

Propes is deeply committed to experiential learning, leading multiple international student trips including to Paris in 2014 and 2017, a month-long excursion to Poland in 2015 co-led with colleagues Michael Birdwell and Jeffery Roberts in conjunction with Austin Peay State University, Georgia and South Carolina in 2013 where students met President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter, and accompanying a Foreign Languages group to Morocco in 2018. In 2016, she chaired the Ohio Valley History Conference hosted by the History Department, organizing 23 panels featuring 61 papers, a welcome reception, book exhibit, banquet, and farewell luncheon. She has served on the College of Arts and Sciences Curriculum Committee, contributed to transforming the Honors Program into the Honors College, chaired tenure and promotion committees for colleagues, participated in faculty development workshops such as Reacting to the Past, and serves as a certified departmental reviewer for Institutional Review Board applications. Propes is the 2026 Program Chair for the European History Section of the Southern Historical Association and has published book reviews in scholarly journals including H-France Review and International Review of Social History.