Thomas Childers

{{Short description|American historian}}

Thomas Childers Jr. (born 1946){{cite news|url = https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/homepage/20070528_For_many_vets__peace_never_came.html|title = For many vets, peace never came|newspaper = The Philadelphia Inquirer|date = May 28, 2007|accessdate = October 24, 2022|last = Carey|first = Art|url-access = limited}} is an American historian and lecturer. He was hired by the University of Pennsylvania in 1976{{Cite web

|title=Thomas Childers

|url=https://live-sas-www-history.pantheon.sas.upenn.edu/people/emeritus/thomas-childers

|publisher=University of Pennsylvania

}} and in 2017 became the Sheldon and Lucy Hackney Professor of History Emeritus.{{Cite web

|title=The Newly Retired Faculty

|url=https://almanac.upenn.edu/articles/the-newly-retired-faculty

|date=April 25, 2017

|publisher=University of Pennsylvania

}}

Childers was born and raised in Cleveland, Tennessee.{{cite web|url = https://phillyjfm.org/festival-speaker/thomas-childers/|title = Thomas Childers|website = Philadelphia Jewish Film + Media|accessdate = October 24, 2022}} He later attended the University of Tennessee where he received his bachelor's and master's degrees. He gained his Ph.D. in History in 1976 from Harvard University. Much of Childers work focuses on war and society in the twentieth century, particularly World War I and II. His father and uncle both fought in World War II; his uncle was killed in action, and although Childers's father survived, the family still struggled to reunite after his return. This greatly impacted his childhood and influenced his 2009 book about the experiences of American veterans after the war, Soldier from the War Returning: The Greatest Generation's Troubled Homecoming from World War II.

He has received several teaching awards including the Ira T. Abrahms Award in 1987 for Distinguish Teaching and Challenging Teaching in the Arts and Sciences, and the Richard S. Dunn Award for Distinguished Teaching in History. While teaching at the University of Pennsylvania Dr. Childers has taken many Visiting Professorships at well-known colleges such as the University of Cambridge, Swarthmore College, and Trinity Hall College. He has also done many lectures throughout the world in places like Oxford, Berlin, Munich, and London. Dr. Childers's work has been talked about by other historians. Some of those acknowledgements can be found in the book Historiography in the Twentieth Century from Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge written by Georg G. Iggers. For example, Iggers states "Thomas Childers concentrates more directly on language." (Iggers 1997)

Childers has lectured on four of The Great Courses series. {{As of|2007}}, he lives in Media, Pennsylvania.