When I started thinking about this project, I knew I wanted to begin The Three-Cornered War with the Confederate invasion of New Mexico Territory in July 1861. That meant starting with John Robert Baylor. Baylor was born in Kentucky in 1822 and lived much of his early life in Indian Territory, the son of . . .
Read MoreWhen I left academia, my plan was to write a book that I had been thinking about for a while. A book that would tell the complicated story of the Civil War in the Southwest, a theater little-known in American culture and often overlooked (or outright dismissed) in histories of the conflict. . . .
Read MoreWELCOME TO THE ACADEMIC PUB! Where everybody cites your name (but still has to look at your conference badge) BURGERS AND OTHER MAINS The Adjunct: The leftover half of someone else’s over-cooked burger. Special sauce made from tears of rage and frustration and topped with shredded rejection letters. Server will promise . . .
Read MoreIf you’re off to the American Historical Association meeting in Washington, D.C. or the Modern Language Association meeting in New York City this week – godspeed. May you experience no travel disruptions and may you not freeze to death waiting for hotel shuttles or Lyft rides. To help with the not freezing . . .
Read MoreThis week, graduate students across the country are sighing with relief – in the final version of their rushed, written-in-secret, barely intelligible tax plan, the GOP decided not to count graduate tuition waivers as taxable income. The inclusion of this provision in the House bill a month ago provoked loud protests and . . .
Read MoreAs a historian of American culture and of the Civil War in particular, it has been hard to know how to feel about the events of the past year. On the one hand, the 2016 election, with its shocking (at least to me) and devastating effects, has resulted in an almost daily . . .
Read MoreI didn’t know how much I hated the term “independent scholar” until people began to use it to describe me. I left academia four years ago to try to make it as a full-time writer; when anyone asks me what I do, I say, “I am a writer.” Academics, however, still seem . . .
Read MoreAs readers of Historista know, I have been arguing for a while now that the removal of white supremacist memorials provides us with unique opportunities to transform them into socially just and intellectually productive public sites. One of the ways to do this is to appropriate the sculptures themselves – or their . . .
Read MoreBy Matthew Christopher Hulbert For weeks now, marble and bronze likenesses of Robert E. Lee and his Confederate ilk have been – or are in the process of being – toppled from pedestals across the United States. In response, a number of the nation’s foremost historians of the Civil War and . . .
Read MoreIn the days and weeks after the neo-Nazi rally and attacks on anti-hate protestors in Charlottesville, individuals, communities, and local governments across the nation have used creative methods to respond to the monuments to white supremacy in their midst. Some of these acts were destructive and some were constructive. Almost all of . . .
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