Works in Progress
Book/Edited Volumes In Progress:
Unforgettable Sacrifice African American Memory of the Civil War
This in-progress second book manuscript focuses on how African Americans remembered and commemorated the American Civil War and its legacy. Contributing to a large body of scholarship, it seeks to recognize the underappreciated role of diversity within the African American community in shaping memory. African Americans experienced the war as enslaved and free, but also as soldier, contraband, and/or civilian in both the United States and the Confederate States of America. As a result, geographic place, status before war, gender, and wartime experience produced a rich tapestry of collective memories that are not neatly encapsulated within the traditional scholarly categories of Emancipationist, Reconciliationist, or even the Won Cause. Rather the case studies presented in this volume seek to demonstrate the origins, diversity, and evolution of Civil War memory among everyday African Americans. Unforgettable Sacrifice will argue that African Americans, whether nationally, regionally, and/or locally, sought a usable past that honored the service and sacrifice of veterans, the diverse wartime civilian experiences, and the destruction of slavery to advance communal notions of patriotism, democracy, and their full inclusion as American citizens.
Articles/Book Chapters/Essays Forthcoming:
Unforgettable Sacrifice African American Memory of the Civil War
This in-progress second book manuscript focuses on how African Americans remembered and commemorated the American Civil War and its legacy. Contributing to a large body of scholarship, it seeks to recognize the underappreciated role of diversity within the African American community in shaping memory. African Americans experienced the war as enslaved and free, but also as soldier, contraband, and/or civilian in both the United States and the Confederate States of America. As a result, geographic place, status before war, gender, and wartime experience produced a rich tapestry of collective memories that are not neatly encapsulated within the traditional scholarly categories of Emancipationist, Reconciliationist, or even the Won Cause. Rather the case studies presented in this volume seek to demonstrate the origins, diversity, and evolution of Civil War memory among everyday African Americans. Unforgettable Sacrifice will argue that African Americans, whether nationally, regionally, and/or locally, sought a usable past that honored the service and sacrifice of veterans, the diverse wartime civilian experiences, and the destruction of slavery to advance communal notions of patriotism, democracy, and their full inclusion as American citizens.
Articles/Book Chapters/Essays Forthcoming:
- “Implementing Public Schools: Competing Visions and Crises in Postemancipation Mobile, Alabama,” in Freedoms Gained and Lost: Reconstruction and Its Meaning 150 Years Later, ed. Adam Domby and Simon Lewis, book chapter, accepted and forthcoming Fordham University Press.
- “The Slave Cemetery and Apology Marker at the University of Alabama,” in Last Bivouacs: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves, ed. Brian Jordan and Jonathan White, accepted.
- “Education in the South during Reconstruction, 1865-1890,” in Oxford Handbook on Reconstruction, ed. Andy L. Slap, book chapter, revised draft submitted.
- Co-authored with Nishani Frazier and Christy Hyman, "BLACK IS NOT THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT: Public Humanities, DH and the Problem of Black Invisibility," Debates in the Digital Humanities 2022, under review.
- “UDC Boulder: University of Alabama and its Footnotes in the History of Confederate Monuments,” for Journal of a Pandemic Year, submitted July 2020.
- “The Hallowed Grounds Tour: Revising and Reimagining Landscapes of Race and Slavery at the University of Alabama,” for Segregation and Resistance in America’s Urban Landscapes, revisions received and resubmitted March 2021.
- “The UDC Boulder,” entry with interpretative essay, Confederate Monuments Database, edited by Jill Caddell, Kristin Treen and Alan Miller, accepted.
- “Built by William: Slavery and the University of Alabama,” in progress
- "Toward a Third Educational Reconstruction," Legacy of Slavery in Savannah, ed. Melissa L. Cooper and Talitha LeFlouria, in progress.