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Bill Trollinger

Professor; Director of Core Integrated Studies Program

Full-Time Faculty

College of Arts and Sciences: History, Religious Studies, Core

Contact

Email: Bill Trollinger
Phone: 937-229-2827
MH

Profile

Dr. Trollinger graduated with a B.A. in English and History from Bethel College (Minn.) in 1977. He then attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he completed a Ph.D. in U.S. history with a focus on social history. Prior to coming to the University of Dayton in 1996, he was an assistant professor of history at the College of the Ozarks and an associate professor of history at Messiah College. He has written extensively on American evangelicalism and fundamentalism, creationism, the religious “nones,” and the Ku Klux Klan. He currently teaches undergraduate courses for the Department of History and M.A./Ph.D. courses for the Religious Studies Department (while also directing doctoral dissertations). Finally, Dr. Trollinger directs the Core Integrated Studies Program. 

Courses taught

  • REL 672: Special Topics: History of American Evangelicalism in Theology and Practice
  • REL 524: Protestant Christianity

Selected publications

God’s Empire: William Bell Riley and the Making of American Fundamentalism. 2nd ed. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2025.

From Creationism to QAnon: The Culture War Conspiracism of Answers in Genesis.” With Susan Trollinger. Isis (June 2025).

Creationism.” With Susan Trollinger. Oxford Handbook of Christian Fundamentalism. Eds. Andrew Atherstone and David Ceri Jones. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023.

The Antievolution Pamphlets of William Bell Riley. Editor, with introductory essay. Vol. IV: Creationism in Twentieth-Century America. Abingdon UK: Routledge Revivals, 2021.

Religious Non-Affiliation: Expelled by the Right.” Empty Churches: Non-Affiliation in America. Eds. James L. Heft and Jan E. Stets. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.

The Bible and Creationism.” With Susan Trollinger. The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America. Ed. Paul Gutjahr. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Righting America at the Creation Museum. With Susan Trollinger. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. Russian translation. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2025. Accompanying website and blog at rightingamerica.net.

Hearing the Silence: The University of Dayton, the Ku Klux Klan, and Catholic Universities in the 1920s.” American Catholic Studies (Spring 2013).