Research and Writing

My research and writing focus spans the Antebellum Era, including issues leading up to the American Civil War through the 1930s with concentrations on the Civil War and Reconstruction, material culture, gender, race, memory, and identity.

Research

Material items, especially uniforms, badges, and flags had a much larger role in the Civil War than is currently acknowledged in the scholarship. The complications and struggle of logistics, specifically deciding who would pay for uniforms and where they would come from placed an unexpected financial burden on the soldiers and their families plaguing both factions of Civil War society. Secondly, uniforms physically and metaphorically transformed their wearers and influenced those that saw or interacted with them in causing both positive and negative emotions and reactions. The rules and power dynamics of uniforms, badges, and flags were both felt individually and societally wide allowing the objects fluidity in meaning and interpretation. Finally, by using these material objects as a lens we can trace the change over time from practical tools of warfare to their use of sentimentality because of their meanings to individuals and communities. By paying close attention to how they were used in narrative construction for memorial societies and veterans post-war for both the US and the Confederacy, we can see how these objects performed the heavy lifting promoting nostalgia through the 1930s.  

My first book research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, the Phi Alpha Theta National Organization,Western Kentucky University, Library of Special Collections, and my Ph.D. granting institution the University of Nevada, Las Vegas through the History Department, the Graduate and Professional Student Association, and the Graduate College.

Scholarly Publications

Peer-Reviewed Publications

The Fabric of Civil War Society: The Effect of Uniforms, Badges, and Flags, 1859-1939, Louisiana State University Press, forthcoming February 2024.

‘The Suffering and Groans of the Wounded and Dying Were Terrible to See and Hear’: Auditory Experiences of Civil War Suffering, in progress.

Shae Smith Cox, Evan Rothera, and Michael S. Green (eds.): A Companion to Abraham Lincoln, Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming 2025.

Publication for Collected Volumes

“Lincoln and Pop Culture: Representation in the Media,” in A Companion to Abraham Lincoln, Wiley-Blackwell, (eds.) Shae Smith Cox, Evan Rothera, and Michael S. Green, forthcoming 2025.

 “Outfitting the Lost Cause: The Recreation of Memory, Identity, and Southern Sectionalism through Civil War Uniforms, 1865-1920s,” in Buying and Selling Civil War Memory in Gilded Age America, eds. James Marten and Caroline E. Janney, University of Georgia Press, 2021.

Book Reviews

“The Southern Legacy of White Supremacy,” Reviews in American History, Spring 2023

 John M. Sacher, Confederate Conscription and the Struggle for Southern Soldiers, (Louisiana State University Press, 2021), The Kentucky Historical Society, forthcoming.

 Bradley Clampit, Lost Causes: Confederate Demobilization and the Making of Veteran Identity, (Louisiana State University Press, 2022), The Journal of the Civil War Era, forthcoming.

James Gill and Howard Hunter, Tearing Down the Lost Cause: The Removal of New Orleans Confederate Statues, (University Press of Mississippi, 2021), The Journal of Southern History, May 2022.

 Caroline E. Janney, Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox, (University of North Carolina Press, 2021), The Civil War Monitor, January 2022.

“A Trojan Horse, Monument Men, and the Cultural Landscape of Historic Sites,” Reviews in American History 49, no. 3 (2021): October.

Adam H. Domby, The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory, (University of Virginia Press, 2020), H-net, September 2020.

 Thavolia Glymph, The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation, Littlefield History of the Civil War Era Series, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020), H-net, July 2020.

Nicole Maurantonio, Confederate Exceptionalism: Civil War Myth and Memory in the Twenty-First Century, (University of Kansas Press, 2019), Indiana Magazine of History, September 2020.

 Steve Inskeep, Imperfect Union: How Jessie and John Fremont Mapped the West, Invented Celebrity, and Helped Cause the Civil War (Penguin Press, 2020), The Civil War Monitor, March 2020.

 Robert M. Sandow, ed., Contested Loyalty: Debates Over Patriotism in the Civil War North (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018), H-net, May 2019.

Peer Reviewer for Journals

·       Journal of Arizona History

·       Popular Culture Review

·       Material Culture: The Journal of the Pioneer America Society

Public Talks and Media Contributions (Selected)

March 2023, Public Lecture: The Methods of Memory Machines: Remembering the Civil War Through Objects, Civil War Round Table of Central Louisiana

October 2022, Guest Lecture: Outfitting the Lost Cause and Civil War Memory, Auburn University

April 2022, Our Only “Felt” History: Civil War Series Lecture, University of Arkansas, Fort Smith

September 2021, Constitution Day/Rothbaum Lecture, East Central University

May 2019, Mob U-Prohibition Fashion, The Mob Museum

May 2019, College of Liberal Arts Emeritus Faculty Reunion, UNLV

January 2019, Confederate Uniforms and Memory, 10 Minute History

July 2018, Friends of Nevada State Museum, Preserving Nevada, Nevada State Museum

May 2018, Preserve Nevada, 11 Most Endangered Places list, Las Vegas Review-Journal

February 2018, National Council of Public Historians, “Remembering the Civil War in Nevada,” author

January 2017, Ready to Roar Promotion, Channel 13, The Morning Blend

December 2016, Mob Museum, “Prohibition: An Interactive History,” researcher and contributing author

November 2016, The Mob Museum, “In the 1920s, American Women Were Ready to Roar,” Author

Spring 2016-2020, UNLV Public History Website. Web Design and Content Editor.