• Ph.D., History, University of Georgia, 2004 
• M.A., History, University of Georgia, 2000 
• B.A., History, Centre College of Kentucky, 1998 
• Phi Beta Kappa; cum laude

• Associate Professor and Undergraduate Advisor, Mississippi State Univerity, 2012-
• Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Advisor, Mississippi State University, 2006-2012
• Assistant Professor of History, Franklin College, 2005-06
• Director of American Studies, Franklin College, Fall 2005
• Instructor, University of Georgia, Spring 2005

Nineteenth century U.S. South, the Civil War in historical memory, Women, and cultural history

Book, Articles & Book Reviews

• “‘Moving History’: The Life and Afterlife of Louisville’s Confederate Monument,” The Civil War Era and the Summer of 2020, Andrew Slap and Hilary Green, eds. Fordham University Press (2024)
• “ ‘Lamentable Inconsistency:’ Cassius Marcellus Clay and the Dilemma of Anti-slavery Slaveholders,” Slavery & Abolition, Volume 41, 2, (May 2020)
• “Reading Stone and Steel: Statues as Primary Sources for Agricultural History,” (co-authored with James C. Giesen) Agricultural History, Volume 89, Number 3 (Summer 2015)
• “Gettysburg Wasn’t His First Address: Kentucky’s Belated Embrace of Abraham Lincoln,” Common-Place, Vol.14:Is.2 (Winter 2014)
• "The Jack Burden of Southern History: Robert Penn Warren, C. Vann Woodward, and Historical Practice," in Jason Phillips, ed. Master Narratives: Storytelling, History, and the Postmodern South (Louisiana State University Press, Spring 2013)
• "A Sisters' War": Kentucky Women and Their Civil War Diaries," Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Vol 100 Nos. 3 and 4, Summer/Autumn 2012.
• "The Southern Home Front," in The Future of Civil War Era Studies Forum, Journal of the Civil War Era, Volume 2, Issue 1, March 2012
• Memory in Early Twentieth Century Kentucky" Journal of the Civil War Era, Volume 1, Issue 3, September 2011. (winner of the George and Ann Richards Award for best article in JCWE in 2011)
• 

  Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State (University of North Carolina Press, 2010).

• "Civil War Memory "in Eastern Kentucky, is Predominately White: the Confederate Flag in Unionist Appalachia, in Andrew Slap, ed. The Civil War's Aftermath in Appalachia (University Press of Kentucky, 2010)
• "'The Rebel Spirit in Kentucky': The Politics of Reconstruction and Memory in a Border State," in Paul Cimbala and Randall Miller, eds., Reconstruction: The Civil War's Unfinished Business (Fordham University Press, 2010) (forthcoming)
• "'A Crisis in Our Lives:' African-American Protest and the Kentucky Separate Coach Law, 1892- 1900." Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Summer 2000. This essay was awarded the Richard Collins Prize.
• "Mildred Lewis Rutherford," entry in New Georgia Encyclopedia, Ed. John Inscoe, et all, 2004.

Presentations

• “Cassius Marcellus Clay, Masculinity, and Biography,” Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association, Baltimore, Maryland, November, 2022

  “Cassius M. Clay, Brutus J. Clay, and the Limits of Unionist Loyalty,” Biennial Conference, Society of Civil War Historians, Pittsburgh, PA, June, 2018

• “Cassius M. Clay and his Turn Against Reconstruction,” Annual Conference, Center for Civil War Research, University of Mississippi, October 2016 
• “Teaching and Writing about the Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction in the 21st Century,” Biennial Conference, Society of Civil War Historians, Chattanooga, TN, June, 2016
• “Leadership During Reconstruction, ” commenter, Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Providence,
  Rhode Island, April 2016
• “Anti-Labor Sentiment and the Lost Cause in Louisville, Kentucky,” The Civil War’s Legacy and the Shaping of the New South,
  Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association, Atlanta, Georgia, November 2014 
  “In Search of a Usable Past: Contested Memories of Slavery and the Civil War on the Public Stage," Biennial Conference, Society of Civil War Historians, Baltimore, Maryland, June 2014
• "Mass Producing Memory: Monuments and Civil War Memory in Turn-of-the-Century Kentucky," Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, New Orleans, LA, January 2013
• "Discussing Emancipation with Visitors," panel moderator, The Future of Civil War History: Looking Beyond the 150th , Gettysburg College, March 2013
• "Of Brothers and Borders: The Clay Brothers and Civil War Era Kentucky" Biennial Conference, Society of Civil War Historians, Lexington, Kentucky, June 2012
• "'A Friendly Invasion:' The 1895 Grand Army of the Republic Encampment and Kentucky's Confederate Identity," at "Victory Achieved—Freedom Denied: From Civil War to Reconstruction in Kentucky," University of Louisville, March 2012
• "A Confederate Prom Dress in Unionist Appalachia: The Evolution of Civil War Memory in Eastern Kentucky 1865-2008" Biennial Conference, Society of Civil War Historians, Richmond, Virginia, June 2010
• "Memory and the Civil War: Past Contributions and Future Possibilities: A Roundtable Discussion" Southern Historical Association, Louisville, Kentucky, November, 2009. Panel organizer.
• "Ellen Semple Churchill, Appalachian Exceptionalism, and Post-Civil War Identity in Eastern Kentucky," Southern Association of Women Historians Conference, Columbia, South Carolina, June, 2009
• "The Jack Burden of Southern History: Robert Penn Warren, C. Vann Woodward, and Historical Practice," symposium, "Deconstructing Dixie: Southern History and Storytelling," Mississippi State University, May 2009
• "'A Place Full of Colored People, Pretty Girls, and Polite Men:' The Little Colonel and Confederate Identity in Post-Civil War Kentucky," Biennial Conference, Society of Civil War Historians, Philadelphia, PA, June 2008
• "Jefferson Davis and Confederate Memory in Kentucky, symposium," The Contested Legacy of Jefferson Davis, Kentucky Historical Society, June 2008
• "'A Place Full of Colored People, Pretty Girls, and Polite Men:' The Little Colonel and Confederate Identity in Post-Civil War Kentucky," Biennial Conference, Society of Civil War Historians, Philadelphia, PA, June 2008 "A Manifest Aversion to the Union Cause: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in Kentucky," American Historical Association, Philadelphia, PA., January 2006
• "Maryland: Civil War Border State," lecture, Life Liberty and Opportunity: The Struggle for Freedom in St. Mary's Maryland, 1634-1865, National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks of American History Program, St. Mary's College Maryland, June 2005
• "Two Civil Wars: Appalachia and War Memory in Kentucky," invited lecture, sponsored by Center for Appalachian Studies and Services, East Tennessee State University, March 2005
• "Lost Cause, Identity Gained: Historical Memory and the Civil War in Kentucky," Filson Historical Society conference, "Constructing and Reconstructing a Region," May, 2003
• "A Common Fund of Glory: Louisville, the Lost Cause, and Historical Memory," Annual Meeting of the Georgia Association of Historians, April, 2001