Ryan Dearinger, PhD

Ryan Dearinger joined the George Fox history faculty in 2021. Prior to that, he was a history professor at Eastern Oregon University from 2009 to 2021 and a history instructor at the University of Utah from 2006 to 2009. His areas of research and teaching expertise include the American West and Pacific Northwest, immigration, labor and working-class history, environmental history, and violence in American history.

Dearinger was named George Fox's undergraduate “Professor of the Year” for the 2022-23 academic year.

His work has been published widely in the above-mentioned fields, including his 2016 book The Filth of Progress: Immigrants, Americans, and the Building of Canals and Railroads in the West (University of California Press). It received the 2017 Best First Book Award from Phi Alpha Theta, the National History Honor Society.

Dearinger's research has garnered fellowships and grants from the Western History Association, the American Historical Association, the Bancroft Library at the University of California-Berkeley, the Newberry Library in Chicago, Oregon State University's Special Collections & Archives Research Center, the Tanner Humanities Center, the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming, and the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies at Western Washington University.

He has several ongoing book projects. The first is a history of the Pacific Northwest’s hops industry through the experiences of indigenous, immigrant, and American hop-pickers. The second focuses on the history and legacy of Tacoma’s 1885 Chinese expulsion. He is also writing a broader history of the North American West from the 1600s to the present.

Dearinger is an external reviewer for more than a dozen university presses and academic journals, is a contributor to Stanford University’s Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, and was recently a lead faculty for “Manifest Destiny Reconsidered,” a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Landmarks of American History & Culture workshop.

A George Fox alumnus, Dearinger graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history in 2002. He was a member of George Fox’s baseball team, earning all-conference, all-region, and academic all-American honors. Ryan and his wife Jessica (George Fox class of 2004), daughter Taylor, son Ryder, and golden retriever Winnie live in Sherwood, Oregon.

Education