Ph.D. United States History, University of Virginia, 2019
M.A. United States History, University of Virginia, 2015
M.A. Southern Studies, University of Mississippi, 2013
B.A.  American Studies and Anthropology, Phi Beta Kappa, University of Alabama, 2002

Assistant Professor, Department of History, Mississippi State University, 2019-

PUBLICATIONS

Book

• Cold War Country: How Nashville’s Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism (The University of North Carolina Press, 2024). 

Journal Articles
• “The 'Good Old Rebel’ at the Heart of the Radical Right,” Southern Cultures 27, no. 4 (winter 2020): 124-139.
• “Nostalgic for Utopia: Anne Romaine’s Folk Music Protest in the New Left South,” Southern Cultures 24, no. 3 (Fall 2018): 45-61.
• “DASH-Amerikan: Keeping Up with the Social Media Ecologies of the Kardashians,” co-authored with the Praxis Digital Humanities cohort, American Quarterly 70, no. 3 (September 2018): 609-611.

Book Chapters
• “The Blues, Country Music, and Agricultural History” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to American Agricultural History, ed. R. Douglas Hurt (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2022).
• “‘Home Is Where the Hatred Is’: Gil Scott-Heron’s Toxic Domestic Spaces and the Rhizomatic South” in Ecocriticism and the Future of Southern Studies, ed. Zackary Vernon (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2019).
• “Planes, Pencils, and Politics: How Race and Labor Practices Shaped Postwar Atlanta,” in Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power, eds. Matthew Hild and Keri Leigh Merritt (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2018). Awarded “Best Book Related to Labor Education 2018-2019” by the United Labor Education Association.

Book Reviews

Review of Making Music in Music City: Conversations with Nashville Music Industry Professionals, by John Markert. Journal of Southern History 88, no. 2 (May 2022): 433-435.

Review of The South of the Mind: American Imaginings of White Southernness, 1960-1980, by Zachary J. Lechner. The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 118, no. 2 (Spring 2020).

Review of I’d Fight the World: A Political History of Old-Time, Hillbilly, and Country Music, by Peter La Chapelle. The Journal of Popular Music Studies 32, no. 1 (March 2020): 137-139.

Review of Blackface Nation: Race, Reform, and Identity in American Popular Music, 1812-1925, by Brian Roberts. The Journal of African American History 104, no. 3 (Summer 2019): 485-488.
 

“A Polyphonic South: Tyina L. Steptoe on Houston’s Racial and Sonic Fluidity,” South: A Scholarly Journal 49, no. 2 (Spring 2017/2018): 200-202.
 

Review of Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music, and Pan-African Solidarity, by Tsitsi Ella Jaji. The Journal of African American History 101, No. 3 (Summer 2016): 380-382.
 

 Review of Battle Hymns: The Power and Popularity of Music in the Civil War, by Christian McWhirter. The Southern Register (Summer 2012): 24-25.

Public Writing and Media Appearances
• “The Scripto Strikes,” The New Georgia Encyclopedia (forthcoming).
• “The longtime connection between race, country music and military recruitment,” The Washington Post, June 9, 2020.
• “GI Bill opened doors to college for many vets, but politicians created a separate one for blacks” The Conversation, November 9, 2019.
• “Behind the Scenes at BackStory,” C-SPAN 3, original airdate July 4, 2019.
• “The Scripto Strikes: James V. Carmichael and Black Women’s Labor Organizing in Downtown Atlanta,” Atlanta Studies, September 4, 2018.
• “Whitey on the Moon,” Enviro-History, March 16, 2018.
• “Crowning Glory: A History of Hair in America” interview with the Slate podcast BackStory, original air date May 4, 2018.
• “Stars, Stripes, and Country Music,” interview with PBS’s American Experience, November 8, 2017. 
• “Woody Guthrie and the Making of the Folk,” We’re History, July 14, 2016.
• “Progressivism in the South,” We’re History, January 26, 2016.

INVITED PRESENTATIONS

Keynote
• “ReSounding the Archives,” Symposium for the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, University of Virginia (2018).

Colloquium Speaker

• Popular Music Books in Progress, Online Event hosted by the Popular MUsic Studies, the Pop Conference and IASPM-US

• "Is Country Music White Music?, for HIST 2559, "Whiteness: A Historyof a Racial Catefgory," Professors Andrew Karhl and Jalane Schmidt, University of Virginia

• “Drafting Elvis: Memphis, Music, and the Military,” Rhodes College, Memphis, Tennessee (2020).
• “Seems Like I’ve Been Here Before: Historical Connections Between the 1960s and the Present,” Lecture for the Columbus and Lowndes County Historical Society (2019).
• “Planes, Pencils, and Politics: How Race and Labor Practices Shaped Postwar Atlanta,” Southern Labor History Brown Bag, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia (2017).
• “ ‘I Won’t Be Reconstructed’: Exploring Confederate Memory in Popular Culture,” Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi (2013).

Panelist
• Graduate Council Luncheon, Southern Historical Association, Louisville, Kentucky (2019).
• “Political History, Podcasting, and Public Engagement” with Brian Balogh, Nathan Connolly, and Joyce Chaplin, Remaking American Political History Conference, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana (2019).
• “Country Music and the Vietnam War,” International Country Music Conference, Nashville, Tennessee (2018).
• “Nat ‘King’ Cole’s Civil War: How the Intimate Sounds of Pop Music Ignited Alabama’s Racial Tensions in the 1950s,” American Studies Association, Toronto, Canada (2015).

CONFERENCE PARTICIPATION (SELECTED)

• "Southern Nights: Allen Toussaint's Disappearing Louisiana," American Studies Association, New Orleans, Louisiana (2022)

• “ ‘I Wanna Kill Sam’: Obedience, Revolt, and the U.S. Military’s Hip-Hop Problem,” American Studies Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2021).
• “Black on Broadway: Cecil Gant and the Black Talent that Built Nashville’s White Music Industry,” Urban History Association, Detroit, Michigan (2021).

• “G.I. Blues: The Military Roots of Country’s Teenaged Rebellion,” Museum of Pop Culture Music Conference, Presenter, online (2020).
• “Explaining Presidential Scandals,” Managing Scandal in the White House Conference, Panel Chair, Mississippi State University (2019).
• “Undead and Unreconstructed: The ‘Good Old Rebel’ and the Ghosts of the Confederacy in Popular Song,” Museum of Pop Culture Music Conference, Presenter, Seattle, Washington (2019).
• “ ‘It was home’: U.S. Soldiers and the Creation of a Global Country Music Community International Association for the Study of Popular Music, New Orleans, Louisiana (2019).
• “ ‘Whatever happened to the protest and the rage?’: Gil Scott-Heron and the Pentagon’s Environmental Racism,” American Historical Association, Chicago, Illinois (2019).
• “Cadence Count: Capturing Soldiers’ Voices for State Violence,” American Studies Association, Atlanta, Georgia (2018).
• “Foreign Love: U.S. Soldiers, Country Music, and the Gender Politics of Transnational Sexual Encounters,” Museum of Pop Culture Music Conference, Presenter and panel organizer, Seattle, Washington (2018).
• “‘The Army Goes Country and Western’: Race, Politics, and Music Row Militarism in the 1950s, International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Nashville, Tennessee (2018).
• “Geisha Girls, Frauleins, and Filipino Babies: U.S. Soldiers, Country Music, and the Racial Politics of Transnational Sexual Encounters,” Southern Historical Association, Birmingham, Alabama (2018).
• “Listening for the Silent Majority: Political Dissent and Country Music Militarism During Vietnam,” American Studies Association, Chicago, Illinois (2017).
• “Planes, Pencils, and Politics: How Race and Labor Practices Shaped Postwar Atlanta,” Labor and Working Class History Association, Seattle, Washington (2017).
• ‘Brought to You By Your United States Air Force’: How Country Radio and Military Recruitment Joined Forces in the 1960s,” Museum of Pop Culture Music Conference (formerly EMP), Presenter and panel organizer, Seattle, Washington (2017).
• “From North Mississippi to Okinawa: O.B. McClinton, Military Integration, and the Racial Politics of Country Music,” Southern American Studies Association, Presenter and panel organizer, Williamsburg, Virginia (2017).
• “‘Home Is Where the Hatred Is’: Gil Scott-Heron’s Toxic Domestic Spaces,” American Studies Association, Presenter and panel organizer, Denver, Colorado (2016).
• “Black Speck: The Confounding Country Voice of O.B. McClinton,” EMP Pop Conference, Presenter and panel organizer, Seattle, Washington (2016).
• “Anne Romaine’s Progressive Nostalgia: The Politics of Folk Music Activism in the Sunbelt South,” Organization of American Historians, Providence, Rhode Island (2016).
• “Nat ‘King’ Cole’s Civil War: How the Intimate Sounds of Pop Music Ignited Alabama’s Racial Tensions in the 1950s,” Southern American Studies Association, Presenter and panel organizer, Atlanta, Georgia (2015).

Full CV