Doug Cantrell

Doug Cantrell is Professor of History in the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, the largest educational institution in the Bluegrass State. He teaches American History, Kentucky History, Appalachian Studies, and World History at the Elizabethtown, Kentucky campus where he has worked for 35 years. Dr. Cantrell holds degrees from Berea College and the University of Kentucky where he studied under Harry Caudill, Ron Eller, Loyal Jones, and Richard Drake. He has also taught adjunct at the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky while in the Masters and Doctoral program at that institution. In addition to teaching, he has lectured widely about immigrants in the Appalachian coal regions of West Virginia, Southwestern Virginia, and Eastern Kentucky, been a featured speaker for the Kentucky Humanities Council Speakers Bureau, appeared on podcasts, television broadcasts, and contributed articles and book reviews to various academic publications and encyclopedias. 

Cantrell has authored, edited, or contributed to 16 books, including The Making of an American: The Autobiography of a Hungarian Immigrant, Appalachian Entrepreneur, and OSS Officer published by the University of Tennessee Press. Other books include Kentucky Through the Centuries and Belles, Bourbon, Bluegrass and Black Gold. He is currently putting the finishing touches on a book tentatively titled Aliens, Appalachians, and Americans: Immigrants in the Coalfields of West Virginia, Southwestern Virginia, and Eastern Kentucky. Cantrell resides in Elizabethtown, Kentucky with his wife Lisa and well-raised cat Sabrina. He spends the little spare time he has at a log home he and Lisa renovated on the shores of Lake Cumberland in Somerset, Kentucky where they fish for bass in the lake’s pristine waters.