Dr. Larry Gragg joined the History and Political Science Department in 1977, and was chair of the department from 2003 to 2015. He is a specialist in colonial and revolutionary America, and is the author of seven books and over 30 articles on topics ranging from the Salem witch crisis to English colonization in the West Indies to the history of Las Vegas. His most recent books are Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel: The Gangster, the Flamingo, and the Making of Modern Las Vegas (Praeger, 2015), Bright Light City: Las Vegas in Popular Culture (University Press of Kansas, 2013), and The Quaker Community on Barbados:  Challenging the Culture of the Planter Class (University of Missouri Press, 2009). His most recent articles include "El Sonador and the Struggle to Develop Resort Hotels in Las Vegas in the 1930s," Nevada in the West (Spring 2015), "The Anti-Nazi Gangster," History Today (June 2015), "The Role of Witchcraft in the Early Modern World," Comparative Civilizations Review (Spring 2015), and "'A Long Struggle and Many Disappointments': Las Vegas' Failure to Open a Resort Hotel, 1905-1940," Nevada Historical Society Quarterly (Fall 2015).

The recipient of 11 campus Outstanding Teaching Awards, four campus Faculty Excellence Awards, the Missouri Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the University of Missouri System award for Excellence in Teaching, and the University of Missouri system's Thomas Jefferson Award, Dr. Gragg is Curators' Distinguished Teaching Professor emeritus.

Dr. Gragg served as the inaugural chair of the Center for Advancing Faculty Excellence (CAFE) from May 2017 to December 2018. He will continue to serve the center as assistant chair through May 2019.