Craig Friend

Bio

I am a Professor of History and Public History. 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.

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 any of 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

• Becoming Lunsford Lane: The Lives of an American Aeneas (UNC, 2025)
• The Gendered Republic: Women and Men in the United States, 1776-1861, co-edited with Lorri Glover (Virginia, 2025)
• Camp Henry: The History of a Summer Camp in the Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina (privately printed, 2022)
• Reinterpreting Southern Histories: Essays on Historiography (LSU, 2020), co-edited with Lorri Glover, recipient of the 2020 Jules and Francis Landry Award
• A New History of Kentucky, 2nd ed. (Kentucky, 2018), co-authored with James Klotter
• Death and the American South (Cambridge, 2015), co-edited with Lorri Glover
• Kentucke’s Frontiers (Indiana, 2010), recipient of the 2011 Kentucky Governor’s Award
• Family Values in the Old South (Florida, 2010), co-edited with Anya Jabour
• Southern Masculinity: Manhood in the South since Reconstruction (Georgia, 2009)
• Along the Maysville Road: The Early American Republic in the Trans-Appalachian West (Tennessee, 2005)
• Southern Manhood: Masculinity in the Old South (Georgia, 2004), co-edited with Lorri Glover
• The Buzzel About Kentuck: Settling the Promised Land (Kentucky, 1999)
• The Agrarian: Essays on Agricultural History, the South, and South Carolina, co-edited 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: Southern Genealogies in Black and White (book manuscript)
• The Haywoods: A Southern Family (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)
• “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. I am no longer accepting doctoral advisees. If you’d like me to serve as a masters advisor, or as a committee member for your doctoral or masters work, feel free to contact me.

Current Advisees

• Kathryn Schinabeck, “Monuments and Memorials of the Loyalist Diaspora” (Public History PhD, anticipated 2023)
• Alexander Goodrich, “When Voices Rise: Race, Memory, and Public History in Bermuda” (Public History PhD, anticipated 2024)
• Michael Verville, “Depression-Era Resettlement Communities and the Making of Agrarian Memory” (Public History PhD, anticipated 2026)
• Queonnah L. Colemen, “Public Histories of Black Cemeteries” (Public History PhD, anticipated 2028)

Past Advisees

• 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. I do not use my office phone as a protest against the university forcing us to have one just to scam much needed money from departmental budgets.