Gregory L. Bruess
Associate Dean, College of Social & Behavioral Sciences
Associate Professor of History
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Gregory L. Bruess
Associate Dean, College of Social & Behavioral Sciences
Associate Professor of History
Professor Bruess has served as the Associate Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences since 2015.
Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1991
Professor Bruess regularly teaches summer Study Abroad classes in Greece where students visit archeological sites, Byzantine castles, and monasteries. He leads students through the streets of Greek cities and towns, immersing them in history and providing contextualization for the present. Professor Bruess teaches courses on Imperial Russia, Twentieth-Century Russia, the Modern Mediterranean, Nineteenth-Century Europe, Twentieth-Century Europe, and Modern European Revolutions and Civil Wars.
Dr. Bruess’s research interests center on the Eastern Orthodox Christian world. He has published works on religion, identity, and empire in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia, and the book Religion, Identity, and Empire: A Greek Archbishop in the Russia of Catherine the Great (1997). Currently, he is working on two projects: popular belief and pilgrimage as it is manifested at a miracle-working shrine in southern Greece and the establishment and evolution of a memorial near Meligalas, Greece, dedicated to the victims of a massacre that occurred at the site at the beginning of the Greek Civil War in 1944 and where a highly-politicized commemorative event has been held annually since 1945.