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Kean University

Education

  • Ph.D., History, Louisiana State University
  • B.S., M.A., History, St. Louis University

Areas of Expertise

Frank Wetta is a former Leverhulme British Commonwealth, United States Visiting Fellow in American Studies, Keele University, United Kingdom. He is active in the Society for Military History, having served on the society’s book prize committee and the editorial advisory board of The Journal of Military History

His publications include Last Stands from the Alamo to Benghazi: How Hollywood Turns Military Defeat into Moral Victories  (Routledge, 2016) with Martin Novelli; The Long Reconstruction: The Post- Civil War South in History, Film, and Memory(Routledge Press, 2014) with Martin Novelli;  The Louisiana Scalawags: Politics, Race, and Terrorism During the Civil War and Reconstruction (Louisiana State University Press, 2012); Celluloid Wars: A Guide to Film and the American Experience of War(Greenwood, 1992) with Stephen J. Curley. “World War I Films.”  Oxford Online Annotated Bibliographies (Oxford University Press, 2016);“On Telling the Truth about War: World War II and Hollywood’s Moral Fiction, 1945-1956” with Martin Novelli  in Why We Fought: America’s Wars in Film and History (University of Kentucky Press, 2008); "Romantic, isn't it, Miss Dandridge,” in American Nineteenth Century History: The Vistas of American Military History (2006) with Martin Novelli; and "Now a Major Motion Picture: War Films and Hollywood's New Patriotism" in The Journal of Military History (2003), with Martin Novelli. He is currently working on a book-length study of the image of Abraham Lincoln in film.

Courses Taught

  • Modern American History in Film
  • The Civil War and Reconstruction
  • World War I
  • World War II
  • The Vietnam War
  • The Cold War
  • The Rise and Fall of the British Empire
  • Tudor - Stuart England
  • Senior Seminar