Professor Clayton Koppes

Clayton Koppes teaches courses in United States history from 1900 to the present. He specializes in political history, film history, and foreign policy.He is the author of two books, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (Free Press, 1987), coauthored with Gregory D. Black, and JPL: A History of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Yale University Press, 1982). He is at work on "The Code: The Paradoxical History of Movie Censorship in America." The author of many scholarly articles, he has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. A founding member of Oberlin's Environmental Studies Program, he is a past president of the American Society for Environmental History.

From 1996 through 2005 Mr. Koppes served variously as Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Provost. He was
Oberlin's Acting President in fall semester 2000. Mr. Koppes joined the Oberlin faculty in 1978 after serving from 1974-78 as a Senior Research Fellow in History at the California Institute of Technology.

Mr. Koppes's longtime partner is William Norris, a Professor of Sociology at Oberlin.

Office: 307 Rice
Phone: 775-8317
Email: clayton.koppes@oberlin.edu