Bio

I am a Professor of History and Public History, and I currently serve as President-Elect of the Historical Society of North Carolina. In 2019, I was named NCSU Alumni Association Distinguished Graduate Professor. I also served as 2017-2018 President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic.

PLEASE NOTE: I am on leave during spring 2026. I am still available to students and the public, so just email me and make contact.

My academic interests are two-fold: In History, I research in the early American republic, Old South, issues of identity and commemoration, gender and masculinity, and death culture. In Public History, my interests are in public memory and commemoration, family and community history, and the history of public history. My research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Antiquarian Society, the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History, the Winterthur Museum and Library, the Filson Historical Society, and the Pew Charitable Trusts. I have been honored with the Governor’s Award for the best book on Kentucky history in 2007-2010; the Maclura Award for outstanding volunteer work by the City of Raleigh Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Resources program; and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic.

Bookings

I consider it an honor to work with public audiences on historical projects and to present my scholarship to them. I can talk on the topics of my publications and current projects. I may also consider putting together a presentation for your interests, if I have time and sufficient background in the topic. Just ask.

Scholarship

Monographs

• Becoming Lunsford Lane: The Lives of an American Aeneas (UNC, 2025), recipient of the 2025 North Caroliniana Society Book Award
• Camp Henry: The History of a Summer Camp in the Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina (privately printed, 2022)
• A New History of Kentucky, 2nd ed. (Kentucky, 2018), with James Klotter
• Kentucke’s Frontiers (Indiana, 2010), recipient of the 2011 Kentucky Governor’s Award
• Along the Maysville Road: The Early American Republic in the Trans-Appalachian West (Tennessee, 2005)

Edited Collections

• The Gendered Republic: Reimagining Identity in the New Nation, with Lorri Glover (Virginia, 2025)
• Reinterpreting Southern Histories: Essays on Historiography (LSU, 2020), with Lorri Glover, recipient of the 2020 Jules and Francis Landry Award
• Death and the American South (Cambridge, 2015), with Lorri Glover
• Family Values in the Old South (Florida, 2010), with Anya Jabour
• Southern Masculinity: Manhood in the South since Reconstruction (Georgia, 2009)
• Southern Manhood: Masculinity in the Old South (Georgia, 2004), with Lorri Glover
• The Buzzel About Kentuck: Settling the Promised Land (Kentucky, 1999)
• The Agrarian: Essays on Agricultural History, the South, and South Carolina, with John R. Wunder (Clemson, 1987)

Poetry

• “Day in a Historic Park,” North Carolina Literary Review (spring 2019): 170-72, finalist for the 2018 James Applewhite Poetry Prize

Current Projects

• The Entirety of Our Ancestors: Two American Genealogies (book manuscript)
• The Haywoods: Four Brothers and Their Families, White and Black (book manuscript)
• The Devil to Pay: The Business of Death in the Early American Republic (book manuscript)
• Into the Bone of Manhood: Essays on Early American Masculinity (book manuscript)
• “The Purge: Raleigh’s First Black Community and the Lynching of Lunsford Lane” (article manuscript)
• “The Mythology of Lunsford Lane: Drifting Interpretations and the Challenge of Writing History” (article manuscript)
• “Battle of the Markethouse: Class Conflict and Racial Violence in Antebellum North Carolina” (article manuscript)
• “Early American Horror Stories: Politicians and Other Things that Went Bump in the Night” (article manuscript)
• “Origin Myths: The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic” (article manuscript)

Graduate Advising

I work with History MA students interested in American history from the Revolutionary era through the Civil War era, especially the early American republic, Old South, issues of identity and commemoration, gender and masculinity, and death culture. I also work with Public History MA and PhD students working on public memory and commemoration, family and community history, the history of public history, among other topics. If you’d like me to serve as a master’s or doctoral advisor, or as a committee member for your doctoral or masters work, feel free to contact me. I only work with students whom I have taught.

Current Advisees

• John Foster Davis, “The Unsupported Edifice: Arthur St. Clair, the Northwest Territory, & the Early Republic’s Empire, 1783-1803” (History MA, anticipated 2026)
• Michael Verville, “Depression-Era Resettlement Communities and the Making of Agrarian Memory” (Public History PhD, anticipated 2027)
• Queonnah L. Coleman, to be determined (Public History PhD, anticipated 2028)
• Mary Elizabeth Lennon, to be determined (Public History PhD, anticipated 2030)

Past Advisees

• Alexander Goodrich, “Heritage Tourism and the Politics of Public Memory in Bermuda” (Public History PhD, 2025)
• Kathryn Schinabeck, “Monuments and Memorials of the Loyalist Diaspora” (Public History PhD, 2024)
• Nicole Ackman, “’The Best House for 100 Miles’: The History of the Joel Lane Museum House” (Public History MA, 2023)
• William Christopher Laws, “The Millennium of Their Glory: Constructing Public Memory through Civil War Monuments in North Carolina, 1868-1925” (Public History PhD, 2022)
• Sarah Matter Soleim, “To Make History the Living Force’: The Professionalization of Public History, 1880-2000” (Public History PhD, 2021)
• Connor M. Clancy, “Dismantling the ‘Shrine of the South’: The Evolution of Confederate Memory and Commemoration in Lexington, Virginia” (History MA, 2021)
• James Richard Wils, “‘The Most Memorable Epocha’: Commemoration and Memorialization in the Early American Republic” (Public History PhD, 2021)
• Lincoln M. Hirn, “‘Such Outrageous Crimes to Human Beings’: Portrayals of the Domestic Slave Trade in Nineteenth Century Slave Narratives” (History MA, 2021)
• Austin M. Mitchell, “Civic Development in Early National Raleigh: Local Institutions and Republican Order” (History MA, 2021)
• Megan Cullen Tewell, “Prisons in the Popular Mind: Carceral Tourism and the Carceral State” (Public History PhD, 2020)
• Douglas Forbes McCallum, “‘Their Look is Onward’: The Politics of Cherokee Removal in North Carolina” (History MA 2017)
• Loren Michael Mortimer, “Pageants of Sovereignty: ‘Merciless Indian Savages’ and American Nation-State Formation on the North Borderlands, 1774-1775” (History MA, 2013); recipient of the 2013 College of Humanities and Social Sciences Thesis Award
• Amanda Averell Jewett, “Aristocratic Gentlemanliness and Revolutionary Masculinities among Virginia’s Delegation to the Continental Congress, 1774-1776” (History MA, 2013)
• Rachel Elizabeth Trent, “Seeing the Nation by Numbers: The 1874 Statistical Atlas and the Evolution of a Demographic Imagination” (Public History MA, 2012); recipient of the 2012 College of Humanities and Social Sciences Thesis Award
• Marjorie Eleanor Louisa Merod, “Public Memory, Authenticity, and the Frontier Legacy of Daniel Boone” (Public History MA, 2012)
• Jennifer Camille Howard, “Sounds of Silence: How African Americans, Native Americans, and White Women Found Their Voices in Southern Appalachian Music” (History MA, 2012)
• Kimberly Elaine Taft, “Absent Voices: Searching for Women and African Americans at Historic Stagville and Somerset Place Historic Sites” (Public History MA, 2010)
• Jessica Lynn Gillespie, “‘Loved to stayed on like it once was’: Southern Appalachian People’s Responses to Socio-Economic Change—the New Deal, the War on Poverty, and the Rise of Tourism” (History MA, 2010); recipient of the 2010 College of Humanities and Social Sciences Thesis Award and the 2011 Conference of Southern Graduate Schools Master’s Thesis Award in Humanities and Fine Arts
• Brian Isaac Kreiger, “Power Struggle in the Old Northwest: Why the United States Won and the Indians Lost the Indian War, 1786-1795” (History MA, 2008)
• Andrea Rebecca Gray, “Supper on the Trail: How Food and Provisions Shaped Nineteenth-Century Westward Migration” (History MA, 2008)

Office Hours

Scheduled office hours vary each semester, but I welcome you making an appointment via email to meet in person, by phone, or via Zoom. In protest against the university forcing us to have an office phone just to scam much needed money from departmental budgets and waste taxpayers’ investments in higher education, I do not use my office phone, so please do not leave a message there.