Education

Teaching Interests

U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction

American Religious History

American Intellectual and Cultural History

Religious Studies

Research

BOOKS

With Melissa Teed, Daily Life of African American Slaves in the Antebellum South (Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2020)

Joseph and Harriet Hawley’s Civil War: Partnership, Ambition and Sacrifice (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018)

With Melissa Teed, Reconstruction:  Guides to Historic Events in America (Santa Barbara: ABC/CLIO-Greenwood, 2015)

A Revolutionary Conscience: Theodore Parker and Antebellum America (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2012)

John Quincy Adams: Yankee Nationalist (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2006)

JOURNAL ARTICLES

"Idealism and Ambition: Joseph R. Hawley, the 7th Connecticut, and the Battle of Olustee," Connecticut History (Spring2014), Vol. 53 Issue 1, 63-85.

"Loyalty and Liturgy: Union Occupation and Religious Liberty in Wilmington, North Carolina, 1865," American Nineteenth Century History Mar2014, Vol. 15 Issue 1, p43-65

Interfaith Encounter and Religious Pluralism:  J.T. Sunderland’s Mission to the Brahmo Samajes of India, 1895-96 American Studies 50 (Spring/Summer 2009), 5-23

“Race Against Memory: Katherine Mayo, Jabez Sunderland, and Indian Independence,” American Studies 44:1-2 (Spring/Summer 2003): 35-57

“The Politics of Sectional Memory: Theodore Parker and the Massachusetts Quarterly Review, 1847-1850,” Journal of the Early Republic 21 (Summer 2001): 301-329.

“‘A Brave Man’s Child’: Theodore Parker and the Memory of the American Revolution, 1845-1860,” Historical Journal of Massachusetts 29 (Summer 2001): 170-191.

“Reassessing the Meaning of Slavery in New England History,” Connecticut History 39 (Fall 2000), 102-108.

“Racial Nationalism and Its Challengers: Theodore Parker, John Rock and the Antislavery Movement,” Civil War History 49 (June 1995), 142-160.

Community Engagement

Critical Conversations 1.0:  “The Confederate Flag”.  SVSU, September 25, 2018.

“A Civil War Marriage: Joseph and Harriet Hawley,” at Daughters of the Union meeting, UCC of Midland, October 25, 2017.

"'A Regeneration of Men's Hearts':  Harold S. Gray, Christian Non-Violence and World War I Pacifism," at (Be)Causes and Effects: A Centennial Assessment of the Causes and Consequences of World War I, April 9, 2016 at Grace A. Dow Memorial Library, Midland, MI. 

"Contesting Freedom: The Civil War After Appomattox," 18 Annual Thomas and Hilda Rush Memorial Lecture, October 8, 2015, Saginaw Valley State University.

“Pacifism, Just War and the Christian Tradition,” Presentation as part of a panel entitled “Exploring the Gospel of Peace,” at Chapel Lane Presbyterian Church, Midland, Michigan, January 19, 2014.

Honors and Awards

2015 - Rush Memorial Lecturer
2015 - Earl Warrick Award for Excellence in Research
2012 - Distinguished Professor, President's Council of the State Universities of Michigan
2011 - Ruth and Ted Braun Fellow
2000 - Landee Award for Excellence in Teaching

Affiliations

Society for Civil War Historians

Southern Historical Association

American Society for Church History