Education Ph.D. (history), University of Maryland, April 2017
M.A. (education), University of Mississippi, June 2009
B.A. (history) with honors, Williams College, June 2007
Appointments Assistant Professor, Department of History and Africana Studies, University of Tennessee, 2019-Present Assistant Professor, St. John’s University, Department of History, 2017-2019 Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh, Department of History, 2016-17
Publications
Refereed Journal Articles “‘A Grim Memorial of Its Thorough Work of Devastation and Desolation’: Race, Class, and Memory, in the Aftermath of the 1893 Sea Island Hurricane,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 18 (April 2018): 297-316.
“Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Sustaining a Culture of Excellence in the Twenty-First Century," Journal of African American Studies 17 (Summer 2013): 142-52, with Nia I. Cantey, LaKerri R. Mack, and Danielle Joy Davis
Book Reviews Review of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow, Los Angeles Review of Book (May 2019) Review of Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood, Race over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston, Journal of the Civil War Era(May 2019) Review of Paul E. Herron, Framing the Solid South: The State Constitutional Conventions of Secession, Reconstruction, and Redemption, Journal of Southern History (June 2018) Review of Tera W. Hunter, Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century, H-Net: South (January 2018) Review of Bruce C. Baker and Carole Emberton, eds., Remembering Reconstruction: Struggles over the Meaning of America’s Most Turbulent Era, Journal of American Ethnic History (June 2018)
Manuscript in Preparation
Requiem for Reconstruction: The South Carolina Lowcountry and the Afterlife of Radical Republicanism, 1880-1940
Fellowships Summer Institute on the Visual Culture of the Civil War Era, National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Social History Project, July 2018 Postdoctoral Fellowship, Carnegie Mellon University, 2017-18 (Declined) Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship, Graduate School, University of Maryland, Fall 2016 (Declined) Dissertation Fellowship, Department of History, University of Maryland, Spring 2016 Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship (Honorable Mention), 2015-16 Prospectus Development Grant, Department of History, University of Maryland, Summer 2012 Graduate Fellowship, Department of History, University of Maryland, 2009-10, 2013-14 Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, Williams College, 2005-07
Research and Travel Grants Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, Mellon Mays Fellowship Travel and Research Grant, Summer 2015 Travel Grant, College of Arts and Humanities, University of Maryland, Fall 2014 Samuel Merrill Graduate Student Research Award, Department of History, University of Maryland, Summer 2014 Pre-Doctoral Research Development Grant, Social Science Research Council, 2013 Graduate Studies Enhancement Grant, Social Science Research Council, 2012
Awards Journal of Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Best Paper Prize, Honorable Mention, 2020 Memphis State 8 Paper Prize, University of Memphis Graduate Association for African American History Conference, 2016 Sterling Brown Class of 1922 Citizenship Prize, Williams College, 2007. Class of 1968 Scholar, Williams College, 2007 Washington Fellow, Institute for Responsible Citizenship, 2006
Papers Presented “Lowcountry Epistemologies and the Black Geography of Reconstruction,” Black Geographies Symposium, Berkeley, California, March 2020 “‘The King of Beaufort’: Robert Smalls, Machine Politics, and the Battle over the Soul of Reconstruction,” The Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Charleston, South Carolina, October 2019 Chair and Organizer, “Emancipationist Memory and Radical Freedom Dreams: New Directions in the African American Experience during Reconstruction,” Southern Historical Association, Birmingham, Alabama, November 2018 “Forgetting Forty Acres and a Mule: Black Land Loss, Penn Land Services, and the Politics of Rural Life in the Post-Civil Rights Era, 1945-1980,” U.S. Intellectual History Society, Dallas, Texas, November 2017 “Folklore, Reconstruction, and Anti-Modern Regionalism in the Interwar Lowcountry,” American Historical Association, Denver, Colorado, January 2017 “Forgetting Forty Acres and a Mule: Black Land Loss, Reparations, and the Memory of Reconstruction in the Post-Civil Rights South,” African American Intellectual History Society, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, March 2016 “The Myth of Robert Smalls and the Afterlife of Reconstruction in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1878-1895, Graduate Association for African-American History, University of Memphis, February 2016 “‘Some Sort of Negro Paradise’: The South Carolina Lowcountry and the Spatial Politics of the Post-Reconstruction Public Sphere, 1876-1895,” Emerging Scholars Speakers Series, Pennsylvania State University, January 2016 “Help Me Be a Farmer and I Will Not Be a Problem”: St. Helena Island, Industrial Education, and the Battle over the Memory of the Penn School, 1900-1930,” Washington Area African American Studies Seminar, October 2014 “The New South’s New Negro: The Search for Agricultural Citizenship in Postbellum Beaufort County, South Carolina,” Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, September 2014 “Through the Eye of the Storm: Disaster Relief and Political Power in the Aftermath of the 1893 Sea Island Storm,” Annual Meetingof the American Studies Association, November 2012 “Through the Eye of the Storm: Catastrophe, Race, and Memory during the Sea Island Storm of 1893,” Annual University of Maryland History Graduate Student Association Conference, February 2012 “The Persistence of Death and Imperial Violence in the Premodern World,” Graduate Conference on Engaging and Articulating Race, University of Victoria, British Columbia,June 2010
Invited Talks and Panels
Lecturer, “The Great Migration and United States History,” Teaching with Primary Sources Workshop, Knoxville, TN, February 2020 Lecturer, “The Reconstruction Amendments and American History,” Knox County Public Schools Social Studies Workshop, Knoxville, TN, February 2020 Panelist, “SSRC-Mellon Mays PhD Professional Development Conference,” SSRC-Mellon Mays, New York, New York, February 2017 Lecturer, Civil War and Reconstruction Teachers’ Seminar, Gilder Lehrman Institute, Newark, NJ, June 2017 Lecturer, African American History from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement, Gilder Lehrman Institute, Bronx, NY, May 2017 Interviewer, A Conversation with Jeanne Theoharis on A More Beautiful and Terrible History, St. John’s University, Queens, NY, March 2017 Organizer/Lecturer, The Murder of Fred Hampton, St. John’s University, Queens, NY, February 2017 Lecturer/Discussant, Silencing the Past: Confederate Statues and American Memory, St. John’s University, Queens, NY, September 2017 Panelist, “History Haunts Us: John Henry and the Memory of Reconstruction,” August Wilson Center, Pittsburgh, PA, February 2017Podcast guest, “The Meaning of Reconstruction in the Twenty-First Century,” Huffington Post Podcast Network, (forthcoming) Panelist, “When Will Black Lives Matter,” Bolin Legacy Weekend, Williams College, April 2016 Guest lecturer, “Why Reconstruction Mattered,” The Black Man Can Institute, American University, Washington, DC, February 2015 Panelist, “Recent Scholarship on Space and Place in Africana Studies,” Emerging Scholars Conference in Africana Studies, Gettysburg College, February 2013 Panelist, “Mellon Mays Undergraduate Forum on Navigating Graduate School,” Williams College, March 2010.
Teaching Experience
Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Tennessee, 2019-Present. The Blues and Black America History of the New South The Rise and Fall of American Slavery United States History since 1877 History of African American Women The Great Migration and African American Urban HistoryAssistant Professor, Department of History,
St. John’s University, 2017-Present African American History 1 African American History 2 Emergence of a Global Society History of the New South (graduate seminar) United States History since 1877 Civil War and Reconstruction
PhD. committees:· Tess Evans, “From Native Ground to Underground: Political and Rival Cultural Landscapes at the Arkansas Post, 1686-1850” (2020)
Service Graduate Committee, University of Tennessee, 2020-21 Southern Historical Association, Conference Planning Committee, 2020 Africana Studies Search Committee, Chair Search, 2020 Africana Studies Minor Planning Committee, St. John’s University, 2018-Present Graduate Student Representative, African American History Job Search, History Department, University of Maryland, 2013-14 Graduate Student Representative, US and the World Job Search, Department of History, University of Maryland, 2012-13 Graduate Student Representative (elected), Graduate Committee, Department of History, University of Maryland, 2012-13 Dean’s Diversity Task Force, College of Arts and Humanities, University of Maryland, 2011-12 Department of History Representative, College of Arts and Humanities Graduate Committee, University of Maryland, 2011-12