Northern Illinois University
Department of History
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Current Research

My current research examines the evolution of faculty and student cultures at a traditionally white institution of higher learning in the American South during the era of the Civil Rights movement. I am particularly interested in how leaders of the institution used state and federal resources, as well as the power of their offices, to develop a surveillant culture that sought sequentially to sustain segregation and deny the impact of integration. Emboldened by the fact that the end to desegregation failed to result in the demise of civilization, white faculty and students, often in league with their African American peers, began after 1965 to demand that the institution embrace academic freedom, shared governance and student rights. Those efforts took another decade to accomplish. I'm also interested in examining how the movements to give voice to faculty and students shaped the institution in fact and in memory over the next thirty years.

Major Publications

• Political Culture in the Nineteenth-Century South: Mississippi, 1830-1900. Louisiana State University Press, 1995.
• (Editor with James W. Ely) The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Law and Politics, vol. 10. University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
• (Editor) French Colonial Louisiana in the Atlantic World. Louisiana State University Press, 2003.

Teaching Interests

My teaching interests are broad. In fact, I prefer to teach courses that span a long period. My particular teaching interest lies in the American south across time.

Courses Taught

• HIST 260 American History to 1865
• HIST 261 American History since 1865
• HIST 372 History of the South
• HIST 379 American Military History
• HIST 464 The Civil War Era
• EPFE 723 History of Higher Education
• HESA 500 Foundations of Higher Education