Peter Lau's CV - Rhode Island School of Design

EDUCATION
PETER F. LAU
plau@risd.edu
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ
Ph. D., History, January 2002.
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
Master of Arts in History with Honors, May 1997.
University of Virginia, The College of Arts and Sciences, Charlottesville, VA
Bachelor of Arts in History with Distinction, May 1994.
University School, Hunting Valley, Ohio
Class of 1990.
TEACHING AND PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
The Wheeler School
Dean of Students, 2009 to Present
• Responsible for the Advisor System, Discipline, and Student Life.
• Member of Program Planning Committee, Administration Team, CARES Team
Teacher, History Department, 2006 to Present
•Courses taught: 20 th Century World History (10 th Grade), U.S. History (11 th
Grade), Freedom Dreams: A History of 20 th Century Black Thought (12 th Grade).
•Advisor, 2006 to Present.
•Class Dean, 2007 to 2009.
•Student Senate Advisor
•Committee: Seeking Equity And Diversity (SEAD).
Head Coach, Varsity Girls Tennis, Fall 2006 to Present. Team awarded
sportsmanship honors for 2007 season by the Rhode Island Interscholastic
League.
Highridge Swim & Tennis Club, Lincoln, RI, Summer 2007, 2008
•Head Pro in charge of tennis programs for ages 5 through adult.
Lincoln School, History and Classics Department, 2003-2006
Acting Chair, 2004-2005.
Head Coach, Varsity Tennis, 2004, 2005.
Assistant Varsity & Head JV Basketball Coach, 2003-2004 and 2004-2005.
Advisor, 2004-2006.
• Master Teacher, Brown University, Master of Arts in Teaching Program, Spring of
2005 and 2006.
Courses taught: Civil Rights and American Culture (12 th Grade); U.S. History (11 th
Grade); AP U.S. History (11 th Grade); Making of the Modern World (10 th Grade).
• Faculty Representative on Judicial Board, 2005-2006.
Faculty Advisor to Mock Trial, Political Action Committee, and worked closely
with 2B1 (Student Cultural Awareness Organization).
Organized Upper School Commemoration of Brown v. Board of Education Semi-
Centennial, May 2004, a day-long event remembering and discussing the
origins and consequences of the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Committees: Website, Awards, Handbook, Diversity.
Rhode Island School of Design, Humanities Department, Lecturer, 2006-Present
• Course taught: Freedom Dreams: A History of African American Thought from
the Slave Trade to the Present.
University of Rhode Island, Department of History, Instructor, 2003
Courses taught: The United States since 1877; Introduction to African American
History/Talent Development Program.
Rutgers University, Department of History, Instructor, 2000-2002
Courses taught: Research Seminar, The Struggle for Civil Rights in the United
States; The United States since 1945; Development of the United States to 1877;
History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1900-1980.
Rutgers, University, Department of History, Teaching Assistant, 1998-2000
Courses taught: Development of the United States to 1877; Development of the
United States, 1877 to the Present; Development of the United States to
1877/Gateway Program.
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Teaching Assistant, 1995-1997
Courses taught: United States History, Colonial Era to 1877; United States History,
1877 to the Present; Introduction to African American History, 1619-1865;
The Kennedys through Film.
W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, Harvard University, 1994-
1995, Summer 1997, Summer 1998, Project Coordinator/Assistant to Director(s),
National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Teaching the History of the
Southern Civil Rights Movement, 1865-1965.
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Democracy Rising: South Carolina and the Fight for Black Equality since 1865
(Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006).
Ed., From the Grassroots to the Supreme Court: Brown v. Board of Education and
American Democracy (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004).
Articles, Book Reviews, and Miscellaneous
“Mr. NAACP: Levi G. Byrd and the Re-Making of the NAACP in State and Nation,
1917-1960,” in Winfred B. Moore and Orville Vernon Burton eds., Toward the
Meeting of the Waters: Currents in the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina
During the Twentieth Century (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008).
Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the
Democratic Party. By Paul Frymer. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
In The Journal of American History Vol. 95, No. 4 (2009): 1236
Paradoxes of Desegregation: African American Struggles for Educational Equality in
Charleston, South Carolina, 1926-1972. By R . Scott Baker. (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 2006). In The Journal of American History. Vol.
94, No. 2 (2007): 573-574.
“From the Periphery to the Center: Clarendon County, South Carolina, Brown, and
Struggle for Democracy and Equality in America,” in Peter F. Lau, ed., From the
Grassroots to the Supreme Court.

“Freedom Road Territory: The Politics of Civil Rights Struggle in South Carolina during
the Jim Crow Era.” Ph. D. Dissertation, Rutgers, The State University of New
Jersey, 2002.
“The NAACP in South Carolina” and “James M. Hinton,” in South Carolina
Encyclopedia (Columbia: University of South Carolina, forthcoming).
“The Southern Negro Youth Congress,” in Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis
Gates, Jr., eds., The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience
(New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999) and in Appiah and Gates, eds., Microsoft
Encarta Africana (Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corp., 1999).
“James E. Jackson, Jr.,” “Esther Cooper Jackson,” “The Southern Negro Youth
Congress,” “The Double V Campaign,” and “J. Waties Waring,” in Waldo E. Martin,
Jr. and Patricia Sullivan, eds., Civil Rights in the United States (New York:
Macmillan Publishing Co., 2000).
PAPERS DELIVERED
“From the Grassroots to the Supreme Court: Clarendon County, South Carolina and
Brown v. Board of Education,” paper delivered at Semi-Centennial Commemoration
of Brown, University of South Carolina, February 6, 2005.
“From New Deal Coalition to Black Rights Revolution: The Black Struggle for Equality
in South Carolina in the era of Brown,” paper delivered at the Annual Meeting
of the Organization of American Historians, Boston, Massachusetts, April 2004.
“Mr. NAACP: Levi G. Byrd and the Re-Making of the NAACP in State and Nation,
1917-1960,” paper delivered at The Citadel’s Conference on Civil Rights in South
Carolina, March 6, 2003.
“Cultural Politics and Civil Rights Reform,” paper delivered at the American
Historical Association Annual Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts, January 5, 2001.
“The NAACP in Greenville, South Carolina: The Politics of Rights Struggle During the
New Deal,” paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Organization of American
Historians, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, April 24, 1999.
“Freedom Road Territory: The Southern Negro Youth Congress and the 1946 Columbia,
South Carolina Youth Legislature,” paper delivered at “Afric’s Sons and Daughters
With Banner Red: The History of the Black Left,” Temple University, Philadelphia
Pennsylvania, October 24, 1998.
FELLOWSHIPS, HONORS, AWARDS
Research Fellowship, John Hope Franklin Center for African and African American
Documentation, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, June 2000.
Research Fellow, The Avery Research Center for African American History & Culture,
The College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina, January 2000.
Research Fellow, The Institute for Southern Studies, The University of South Carolina,
Columbia, South Carolina, June-December 1999.
University Fellowship, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 1997/1998 and
2000/2001.
The Caldwell Prize, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, May 1997. Best essay

written by a student in the Master of Arts program in the Department of History.