Welcome.
I am:
a history prof doing archival justice work using digital methods; rewriting historical narrative through recovery of marginalized voices
This site is: a repository for my research on Black self-emancipation + digital scholarship
a portal to resources for antiracist work
a snapshot of students past and present and what they are doing now
a profile of my courses and public engagement through events & media
... an ongoing experiment.
Meet the students
Masters student Kaleigh Mency is researching Black testimony in the transcripts of 1870s Klan hearings from a Transitional Justice perspective.
COURSES
My Courses
Selected Course Materials
Research & Professional History Resources
These are some of the sites I use in my teaching and research.
Organizations to Follow
I have collected some links to racial justice organizations of interest.
About Me
Scholarship and Biography
My current work examines the world of ritual and revival and its meaning for political awakening in Black refugee or "contraband camps" of the American Civil War. These camps were known as "contraband camps" because African Americans were considered to be between slavery and freedom as "confiscated contraband property" in U.S.-controlled territory across the South. This project elucidates the possibilities and complications of Black spiritual creativity in these camps for kinship formation and postwar political participation. It reckons with "religion" as a dynamic and precarious mediating force between the enslaved and the state at the end of slavery. And it penetrates the question "Who belongs and how?" for those negotiating statelessness and peoplehood in the midst of their self-emancipation. For more on my graduate students, research, courses, and media, click on my webpage.
Areas of Expertise: Race in America, Slavery and Emancipation, Civil War and Reconstruction, American Religion & Culture, Social History of Marginalized Peoples, Race and Religion, American History, The 1619 Project