Education
B.A., University of Florida, 2008
M.A., North Carolina State University, 2010
Ph.D., University of Georgia, 2015
Teaching Interests
American Civil War and Reconstruction;
the American West and Frontier;
Guerrilla Warfare;
American Hunting, Fishing, and Conservation;
Film History
Books
Lincoln at the Movies: Exploring the Cinematic Legacy of America’s Sixteenth President (under advance contract; Louisiana State University Press).
Oracle of Lost Causes: John Newman Edwards and His Never-Ending Civil War (Bison Books, 2023).
Martial Culture, Silver Screen: War Movies and the Construction of American Identity, co-edited with Matthew E. Stanley (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, November 2020).
Writing History with Lightning: Cinematic Representations of Nineteenth-Century America, co-edited with John Inscoe (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, February 2019).
The Ghosts of Guerrilla Memory: How Civil War Bushwhackers Became Gunslingers in the American West (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2016).
The Civil War Guerrilla: Unfolding the Black Flag in History, Memory, and Myth, co-edited with Joseph M. Beilein, Jr. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015).
Articles and Essays
"Reimagining 'Defeat' in the Transnational West: John Newman Edwards, Mexican Exile, and the Confederate Experiment 2.0," part of a joint special issue of the Western Historical Quarterly and the Journal of the Civil War Era. Published in the Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Summer 2021): 123–142.
"The Nineteenth-Century South on Film," Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History (19 November 2020).
“The Trials of Frank James: Guerrilla Veteranhood and the Double-Edge of Wartime Notoriety” in Brian Matthew Jordan, ed. The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2020).
“ReinterpretingJohn Noland: Community Coercion Theory and the Black Confederate Myth” in Bruce Stewart and Steve Nash, eds. Southern Communities: Identity, Conflict, and Memory in the Nineteenth-Century American South (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2019).
“Reappraising a Century’s Worth of Lightning,” Introduction for Hulbert and Inscoe, eds., Writing History with Lightning: Cinematic Representations of Nineteenth-Century America (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2019).
“The Silver Lining of ‘Bad History’ at the Movies: Reconstruction, Confederate Exiles, and The Undefeated (1969),” in Hulbert and Inscoe, eds. Writing History with Lightning: Representations of Nineteenth Century America on Film (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2019).
“The Rise and Fall of Edwin Terrell, Guerrilla Hunter, U.S.A.,” for a special issue of Ohio Valley History on irregular warfare guest edited by Joseph M. Beilein, Jr., Vol. 18, No. 3 (Fall 2018): 42-61.
“Larkin Skaggs and the Massacre(s) at Lawrence” in Myers and McKnight, eds. The Guerrilla Hunters: Exploring the Civil War’s Irregular Conflicts (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2017): 260-281.
“The Business of Guerrilla Memory: Selling Massacres and the Captivity Narrative of Sergeant Thomas M. Goodman” in Hulbert and Beilein, eds. The Civil War Guerrilla: Unfolding the Black Flag in History, Memory, and Myth (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2015): 123-144.
“Of Black Flags and History, Authentic and Apocryphal” with Joseph M. Beilein, Jr., Introduction to The Civil War Guerrilla: Unfolding the Black Flag in History, Memory, and Myth (University Press of Kentucky, 2015): 1-12.
Honors & Awards
John Peter Mettauer Award for Excellent in Research, Hampden-Sydney (2024)
Finalist, Spur Award for Biography, Western Writers of America (2024)
Wiley-Silver Book Prize from the Center for Civil War Research at the University of Mississippi (2017)
C. Vann Woodward Dissertation Prize from the Southern Historical Association (2016)
Lewis Eldon Atherton Dissertation Prize from the State Historical Society of Missouri (2015)
Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, New York (2014)
Professional Affiliations
The Filson Historical Society
Western Historical Association
St. George Tucker Society
Society of Civil War Historians
Research Interests and potential topics for students
Nineteenth-Century America
the Civil War
Antebellum Slavery (including comparative: North American vs. African)
History and Perceptions of Violence (especially "regular" vs. "irregular" modes of violence)
Technology and Warfare (American Revolution to World Wars)
Memory Studies
American South
American West (particularly frontiers and settlement)