“I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
– James Baldwin
I am a Tennessean by birth, an academic by training, and a public historian by instinct. This digital portfolio highlights a few projects that have contributed to my intellectual and professional journey.
This website will require, eventually, heavier updating as I settle into a new academic position at Western Michigan University in the fall of 2023. Stay tuned…
Prison Pens
Gender, Memory, and Imprisonment in the Writings of Mollie Scollay and Wash Nelson, 1863-66
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2018
Living by Inches
The Smells, Sounds, Tastes, and Feeling of Captivity in Civil War Prisons
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019
In Plain Sight
African Americans at Andersonville National Historic Site
National Park Service, December 2020
From Biscuits to Lane Cake: Emma Rylander Lane’s “Some Good Things to Eat”
Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2023.
Place matters. Whether the historic site is a long-commemorated prison, the birthplace of global leaders, or the forgotten location of a great injustice, places have power. Recovering those stories and that power is one way historians contribute to their community’s present and future.
By fate or chance, I spent my first eight years out of a graduate school in southwest Georgia. I arrived as a seasonal park ranger at an infamous prison camp. I stayed to teach for seven years at Georgia Southwestern State University. This gave me a delightful opportunity to work with Jimmy Carter National Historical Park and Andersonville National Historic Sites as well as myriad organizations and individuals from students to a past president and first lady.
