Professor, History
- PhD, University of California Santa Barbara, History
- MA, University of California Santa Barbara, History
- BA, University of California Santa Barbara, History and French Literature
Kathryn C. Statler, PhD, Professor of History, has been a member of the faculty since 1999. She is the Vice-President of USD’s Phi Beta Kappa chapter and the Fulbright Program Adviser for USD. Statler offers undergraduate courses on the Vietnam Wars, U.S. Foreign Relations, Modern France, Armed Conflict and American Society, and World War I and World War II. Her research focus is international and multidisciplinary, with an emphasis on alliance politics and cultural diplomacy.
Areas of Expertise
U.S. Foreign Relations, Vietnam Wars, France, Alliance Politics
Scholarly Work
Her book Replacing France: The Origins of American Intervention in Vietnam (2007) examines how and why the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration chose to replace France militarily, politically, economically, and culturally in Vietnam, with the result that the United States became the dominant western power there by the mid 1950s. Statler is also co-editor of The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War (2006) in which nationally recognized scholars assess the collision of decolonization and Cold War concerns and the impact of this collision on U.S. foreign policy. She is the author of numerous articles, including, most recently, “Death Grip Handshakes and Flattery Diplomacy: The Macron-Trump Connection and Its Greater Implications for Alliance Politics,” in The Liberal Order Strikes Back? Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and the Future of International Politics (2023). Her current book project, titled Lafayette’s Ghost: How Women and War Kept the Franco-American Alliance Alive, is a history of Franco-American cultural diplomacy from the American Revolution to the present.
Areas of Interest
Statler has taught numerous courses at USD, including first year seminars through the Honors Living Learning Community, surveys in United States and World history, historians’ methods, upper division courses, and senior capstone seminars. She has also team-taught interdisciplinary upper division honors and advanced integration courses on French politics and history, U.S. military interventions during and after the Cold War, and the history and physics of the bomb. She periodically offers a summer school course in Paris titled “Americans in Paris through Revolution, War, and Peace.”