Phone: 828-227-3907 (history department); 828-227-7129 (MHC)
Email: philyaw@email.wcu.edu  
Office Address: McKee Building 204B; HFR 151 (MHC)

Biography:

Dr. Philyaw received his M.A. from the College of William and Mary and his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina.

Director of WCU’s Mountain Heritage Center, Philyaw is a specialist in the colonial and revolutionary periods. He also has strong interests in the American West and public history. He published Virginia's Western Visions: Cultural and Political Expansion on an Early American Frontier with the University of Tennessee Press in 2004. His essays have appeared in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography and After the Backcountry: Rural Life in the Great Valley of Virginia, 1800-1900. 

Dr. Philyaw received the Hunter Scholar Award in 2000-2001. He won the College of Arts and Sciences Teaching Award in 2002, the Board of Governors’ Excellence in Teaching Award in 2006, and the Paul A. Reid Service Award in 2006. In 2003, he served as Scholar-in-Residence at the Summer Institute in the Decorative Arts at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Old Salem.

Courses Taught:

• History 141: “Turning Points in American History”
• History 297: “Sophomore Seminar”
• History 341: “North Carolina History”
• History 431/531: “Colonial America”
• History 432/532: “The Revolutionary Era”
• History 448/548: “The American West?”
• History 471/571: “Introduction to Public History”
• History 693: “Problems in North Carolina History”