Curriculum Vitae

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Positions

Rice University, Assistant Professor (2008-Present)
University of Denver, Assistant Professor (2006-2008)

Education

Ph.D, History, Johns Hopkins University (2006)
Dissertation: Our Country is the World: Radical American Abolitionists Abroad, http://hdl.handle.net/1911/27492

M. A., Philosophy, Texas A&M University (2001)
B.A., History, Texas A&M University (2000). Summa Cum Laude.

Publications

Book

The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery: Garrisonian Abolitionists and Transatlantic Reform (Louisiana State University Press, 2013). Read the introduction online.

Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

“The Case of John L. Brown: Sex, Slavery, and the Trials of a Transatlantic Abolitionist Campaign,” forthcoming in American Nineteenth-Century History.

“Saltwater Antislavery: American Abolitionists on the Atlantic Ocean in the Age of Steam,” Atlantic Studies 8, no. 2 (June 2011), 141-163. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2011.562349. Reprinted in Abolitionist Places, ed. Martha Schoolman and Jared Hickman (forthcoming, London: Routledge, 2013).

“His Brothers’ Keeper: John Brown, Moral Stewardship, and Interracial Abolitionism,” Slavery and Abolition 32, no. 1 (March 2011), 27-52. http://hdl.handle.net/1911/64545 or http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2011.538197

“Philadelphia Abolitionists and Antislavery Cosmopolitanism, 1760-1840,” in Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia: Emancipation and the Long Struggle for Racial Justice in the City of Brotherly Love, ed. Richard Newman and James Mueller (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2011), 149-173.

“Repealing Unions: American Abolitionists, Irish Repeal, and the Origins of Garrisonian Disunionism,” Journal of the Early Republic 28, no. 2 (2008), 243-269. http://hdl.handle.net/1911/27612. Winner of Ralph D. Gray Article Prize, SHEAR.

“The Fourth and the First: Abolitionist Holidays, Respectability, and Radical Interracial Reform,” American Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2005): 129-151. http://hdl.handle.net/1911/27613

Co-Edited Journal Issue

Co-editor, with Bethany L. Johnson, of “New Approaches to Internationalizing the History of the Civil War Era,” special issue of Journal of the Civil War Era 2, no. 2 (June 2012). Also published in an Amazon Kindle edition.

Website

Editor, Dick Dowling and Sabine Pass in History and Memory (2012- ). An Omeka exhibit hosted at the Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University. http://exhibits.library.rice.edu/exhibits/show/dick-dowling

Commissioned Essays

“New Approaches to Internationalizing the History of the Civil War Era: An Introduction,” co-authored with Bethany L. Johnson, Journal of the Civil War Era 2, no. 2 (June 2012), 145-150. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/cwe.2012.0046

“The Lincoln-Douglass Debates,” Reviews in American History 38, no. 1 (March 2010), 169-176. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/rah.0.0173

“John Brown, Quietist,” Common Knowledge 16, no. 1 (Winter 2010), 31-47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-2009-059

“Abolitionism” in The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History, ed. Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 6-8.

“The United States Navy and the African Squadron,” introduction to “Treasures from the Gilder Lehrman Collection” department in New-York Journal of American History 67, no. 1 (2008), 52-57.

“Blogging in the Early Republic: Why Bloggers Belong in the History of Reading,” Common-Place 5, no. 4 (July 2005), http://www.common-place.org/vol-05/no-04/mcdaniel/. Reprinted in John Alberti, Text Messaging: Reading and Writing about Popular Culture (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008).

Online Posts

“Captivity in Black and White,” co-authored with Andrew F. Lang for the New York Times blog, “Disunion,” February 9, 2013. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/captivity-in-black-and-white/

“Why Study Digital History?” (August 30, 2012). Selected as an Editors’ Choice post for Global Perspectives on Digital History. http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/why-study-digital-history.html

Editor of a roundtable review forum on Daniel Walker Howe’s What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), H-SHEAR, an H-Net Mailing List (November-December 2008).

“The Relationship between National Exceptionalism and the Transnational Perspective,” Forum on Transnational History published by Palgrave Macmillan, http://www.transnationalhistory.com/discussion.aspx?id=1548

Encyclopedia Entries

“West Indian emancipation celebrations,” “World’s Antislavery Convention 1840” “Thompson, George,” “O’Connell, Daniel,” and “Kossuth, Louis,” in Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition, ed. Peter Hinks and John McKivigan (2 vols., Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007).

“Leonard Grimes” and “Jehiel Beman” in The African American National Biography, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Book Reviews

Angela F. Murphy, American Slavery, Irish Freedom: Abolition, Immigrant Citizenship, and the Transatlantic Movement for Irish Repeal, in Journal of British Studies 51, no. 3 (July 2012), 776-777. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/665402

Margot Minardi, Making Slavery History: Abolitionism and the Politics of Memory in Massachusetts, in Civil War Book Review (Summer 2011).

Robert E. McGlone, John Brown’s War Against Slavery, in Journal of Southern History 77, no. 2 (May 2011), 436-7.

Brian McGinty, John Brown’s Trial, in Journal of American History 97 (September 2010), 512-513.

Bruce A. Ronda, Reading the Old Man: John Brown in American Culture, in Journal of Southern History 76, no. 1 (February 2010).

George M. Fredrickson, Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race, in Journal of Southern History 75, no. 4 (November 2009), 1062-1063.

Lorien Foote, Seeking the One Great Remedy: Francis George Shaw and Nineteenth-Century Reform, in Civil War History 52, no. 2 (2006), 178-180.

Stanley Harrold, The Rise of Aggressive Abolitionism: Addresses to the Slaves, in H-Net Reviews, September 2004. http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=80561097904796.

Media

Interviewed on-screen for The Abolitionists, a three-part American Experience documentary airing nationally on PBS in January 2013. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/abolitionists/

Awards

2013 Seed Grant for a Digital Humanities Project from the Humanities Research Center, Digitization in the Humanities Workshop ($2,000)

2012 Grant to organize and host a year-long series of “master classes” to introduce undergraduates and graduate students to the field of digital history, Humanities Research Center, Rice University

2011 Virginia and Griff Lawhon Digital Education Award, Rice University

2009 Ralph D. Gray Article Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, awarded to the best article published in the 2008 volume of the Journal of the Early Republic

2004 Scholarly Fellowship, Library of the New-York Historical Society and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

2004 Honorable Mention, La Pietra Dissertation Travel Fellowship in Transnational History, Organization of American Historians.

2004 Prize Teaching Fellowship from the Center for Africana Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

2003 Dean’s Teaching Fellowship, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Johns Hopkins University.

2001 Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies.

2002 Alexander Butler Prize, for the best paper by a first-year history doctoral student at Johns Hopkins University.

2001 William and Lois Diamond Fellowship, awarded to one outstanding incoming doctoral student in the Department of History.

Talks

Invited Lectures

Presenter for the Digital Humanities Boot Camp Series, Humanities Research Center, Rice University: “Online Publishing,” February 6, 2013.

Plenary Speaker at “The Emancipation Proclamation: A Turning Point,” a Regional Commemoration and Conference: “Before Juneteenth: The Emancipation Proclamation in Texas,” September 22, 2012, Houston Baptist University.

Featured Speaker, Distinguished Lecture Series, Houston Museum of Natural Science: “Dick Dowling and the Battle of Sabine Pass: The View from Emancipation Park,” April 24, 2012.

Invited Speaker, Lone Star College, Cy Fair: “Abraham Lincoln and the Road to the Emancipation Proclamation,” January 18, 2012. Part of a lecture series held in conjunction with Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War, a traveling exhibition from the National Constitution Center.

Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, Rice University: “Abolitionism and Slavery in the Coming of the Civil War,” Fall 2011.

University of Houston: “New Directions in the Study of the Civil War Era: A Roundtable Forum,” Invited Panelist for forum cosponsored by the Center for Public History and the Department of History at University of Houston, October 18, 2010.

Rice University Digital Media Center: “Teaching with Blogs,” October 14, 2010.

Texas A&M University: “Saltwater Antislavery: Abolitionist Journeys on the Atlantic Ocean in the Age of Steam,” Keynote Address at “Encounters along the Journey,” the Spring 2010 Interdisciplinary Symposium of the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, April 23, 2010.

Yale University: “John Brown, William Lloyd Garrison, and Nonviolent Abolitionists,” Invited Panelist for “John Brown, Slavery, and the Legacies of Revolutionary Violence in Our Own Time: A Conference Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Harpers Ferry Raid,” the 11th Annual International Conference of the Gilder Lehrman Center, October 29-31, 2009.

Rice University: “Ghosts of Distinction: Reconsidering John Brown’s Interracial Relationships,” invited presentation to Houston Area Southern Historians (HASH) Symposium, September 9, 2008.

University of Montreal: “Beyond Anti-Exceptionalism: Using Transnational History to Write the History of Nationalism,” Department of History, October 29, 2007.

Johns Hopkins University: “Are They a Nation? Civic Nationalism in Transnational Perspective,” Symposium in Honor of Dorothy Ross, April 27-28, 2007.

Conference Panels

“Resolutions for Teaching Digital History,” Roundtable on Teaching Digital History Methods for History Graduate Students, Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, New Orleans, January 6, 2013.

Organized sessions on Open Notebook History and Programming for Historians at THATCamp AHA 2013, New Orleans, January 3, 2013.

“American Abolitionists, John Stuart Mill, and the Transatlantic Problem of Democracy,” Bi-Annual Meeting of BrANCH (British American Nineteenth Century Historians) in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, October 12-14, 2012.

“Spreading the News about Hydropathy: How Did Americans Learn to Stop Worrying and Trust the Water Cure?,” Annual Meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, Baltimore, Maryland, July 19-22, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1911/64493

“Wendell Phillips and the ‘Ever-Restless Ocean’ of Democracy,” at Wendell Phillips Bicentennial Symposium, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, Harvard Law School, June 2-4, 2011.

“The Case of John L. Brown: Slavery, Sex, South Carolina, and the Whispering Gallery of Transatlantic Abolitionism,” at “Civil War-Global Conflict,” the 2011 international conference of the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World program at the College of Charleston, SC, March 3-5, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1911/37261

“‘All Hail, Public Opinion!’: American Abolitionists on British Liberalism and the Repeal of the Corn Laws,” Organization of American Historians, Houston, TX, March 17-20, 2011. Broadcast on C-Span.

Discussant, “The Memory of John Brown & Radical Antislavery Culture in America, 1880-1940,” Organization of American Historians, Washington, D.C., April 7-10, 2010.

“What Counts as Radical Abolitionism? A Reconsideration of Recent Scholarship,” Organization of American Historians, Seattle, WA, March 26-28, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1911/27611

Discussant, “American Civic Identity and Practice in Comparative Perspective,” Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, Philadelphia, PA, July 19, 2008.

“Repealing Unions: American Abolitionists, Irish Repealers, and the Coming of the Civil War, 1842-1847,” American Historical Association, Philadelphia, January 5-8, 2006.

“Our Country is the World: American Abolitionists, Louis Kossuth and Philanthropic Revolutions,” Organization of American Historians, Boston, March 25-28, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1911/27609

“Haiti versus Jamaica: American Abolitionists, Anglophilia and West Indian Emancipation,” Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Ninth Annual Conference (New Orleans, June 6-8, 2003). http://hdl.handle.net/1911/27610

“The Abolitionist Fourth of July,” Sixth Annual Conference on Holiday, Ritual, Festival, Celebration, and Public Display (Bowling Green State University, May 30-June 1, 2002).

Teaching

Fall 2008 Courses

HIST 396: “The Rise of Transnational Activism” (enrollment: 8)

HIST 423: “American Radicals and Reformers” (enrollment: 12)

Spring 2009 Courses

HIST 246: “The American Civil War Era” (enrollment: 28)

HIST 588: “Graduate Readings in Nineteenth Century America” (enrollment: 12)

Fall 2009 Courses

HIST/FSEM 159: “Legendary Americans” (enrollment: 16)

HIST 587: “Methods in U.S. Cultural History” (enrollment: 7)

Spring 2010 Courses

HIST 118: “United States History, 1848 to Present” (enrollment: 16)

HIST 423: “American Radicals and Reformers” (enrollment: 13)

Summer-Fall 2010

Summer: HIST 246: “The American Civil War Era” (enrollment: 6)

Fall: On Departmental Teaching Release

Spring 2011 Courses

HIST 246: “The American Civil War Era” (enrollment: 15)

HIST 588: “Graduate Readings in Nineteenth Century America” (enrollment: 12)

Fall 2011

HIST 246: “The American Civil War Era” (enrollment: 7)

HIST/FSEM 159: “Legendary Americans” (enrollment: 14)

Spring 2012

HIST 423: “American Radicals and Reformers” (enrollment: 9)

HIST 587: “Methods in U.S. Cultural History” (enrollment: 8)

Spring 2013

HIST 118: “The United States, 1848 to the Present” (enrollment: 40)

HIST 588: “Graduate Readings in Nineteenth-Century America” (enrollment: 8)

Graduate Directed Readings Courses

Drew Bledsoe and Carl Paulus (Spring 2009)

Sarah Bischoff, Zach Dresser, and Andy Lang (Spring 2010)

Lauren Brand, John Marks, and Kelly Weber (Spring 2012)

Undergraduate Independent Study Courses

Anna Roberts (Fall 2009-Spring 2010)

Ryan Shaver, Kathryn Skilton, Jocelyn Wright, and Jaclyn Youngblood (Spring 2011)

Supervised Undergraduate Senior Theses

Caitlin Miller (Fall 2009-Spring 2010)

Kathryn Skilton (Fall 2011-Spring 2012)

Graduate Comprehensive Examination Committees (Chair)

Lauren Brand (2012)

Blake Earle (2013)

Graduate Comprehensive Examination Committees (Member)

Carl Paulus (2009)

Zachary Dresser (2010)

Sarah Bischoff (2010)

Andrew Lang (2010)

John Marks (2012)

Kelly Weber (2012)

Whitney Stewart (2013)

Doctoral Thesis Committees (Member)

Wesley A. Phelps, “A Grassroots War on Poverty: Community Action and Urban Politics in Houston, 1964-1976” (defended March 2010, winner of Longcope Award from Department of History and John W. Gardner Award from the School of Humanities)

Joseph Locke, “Making the Bible Belt: Preachers, Prohibition, and the Politicization of Southern Religion, 1877-1918” (defended April 2012)

Carl Paulus, “The Slaveholding Crisis: The Fear of Insurrection, the Wilmot Proviso, and the Southern Turn against American Exceptionalism” (defended April 2012)

Sarah Bischoff Paulus, “Abraham Lincoln’s Northwestern Approach to the Secession Crisis” (defended April 2013)

Andrew F. Lang, “The Garrison War: Culture, Race, and the Problem of Military Occupation during the American Civil War Era” (defended April 2013)

Mercedes Harper, “White Women’s Heritage Organizations in Texas, 1870-1970” (in progress)

Zachary Dresser

Benjamin Wright

Lauren Brand

Kelly Weber

Service

Professional Service

Manuscript or proposal reviewer for Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Journal of the Early Republic, Journal of Southern History, Louisiana State University Press, American Nineteenth Century History, Civil War History, and Oxford University Press

2010 Ralph D. Gray Article Prize Committee, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic.

Elected Member, Nominations Committee, SHEAR (2013-2015)

Member, Ad Hoc Working Committee on developing a social media and new technology proposal for SHEAR

Co-Book Review Editor, H-SHEAR, the H-Net mailing list for the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (January 2007 - present).

Contributed letter of support to successful NEH grant proposal by the New-York Historical Society to catalog 36,000 nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century pamphlets (2006).

Organized panels on “Rethinking Radicalism in the Antislavery Movement” at the OAH Annual Meeting (2009), “Transnational Histories of the American Civil War Era” at the AHA Annual Meeting (2006), “Revolutions in Atlantic Abolitionism” at the OAH Annual Meeting (2004).

University Service

Head Resident Fellow, Duncan College (2012-present)

Member, Committee on Examinations and Standing (2010-2012)

Faculty Mentor, Will Rice College (2011-2012)

Associate, Will Rice College (2008-2012)

Common Reading Discussion Leader (2011-2012)

O-Week Dinner Host or Co-Host (2009-2012)

Solicited, organized, and served as host for public talk by Professor Francois Furstenberg, Universite de Montreal (September 12, 2011)

Member, Ad Hoc Committee formed by the Humanities Research Center to plan a lecture series in conjunction with Civil War sesquicentennial. Helped to plan and host visits to campus by Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Tony Horwitz and CUNY historian James Oakes (Spring 2010-Spring 2011)

Member, Organizing Committee for “Global Modernities: Keywords and Methods” Conference at Rice University (May 18-20, 2012)

Solicited, organized, and served as host for public talk by Professor Daniel Walker Howe, Emeritus at University of California, Los Angeles (April 15, 2011)

Solicited, organized, and served as host for public talk by Professor James Crisp, North Carolina State University (Fall 2009)

Co-organizer of public talk by Professor Andrew Torget, University of North Texas, “Does the Digital Revolution Mean the End of the Humanities?” (April 16, 2010)

Departmental Service

Member, Undergraduate Committee (2008-2009)

Member, Graduate Committee (2009-present). Drafted proposal for changes to graduate examinations (Fall 2011)

Webmaster (2011-present)

Member, Senior U.S. History Search (Fall 2010-Spring 2011)

Elected Member, Salary Committee (2010-2011)

Departmental Recording Secretary (2008-2009)

Co-organizer, “South and the World in the Civil War Era” symposium (February 20-22, 2009)

Speaker, History Graduate Student Association “Grad Barrel” on Dissertation Writing (April 13, 2010); Reading in Graduate School (November 19, 2010); Blogging as a Teaching Tool (March 30, 2012).

Community Service

Presenter at Advanced Topics Institute for high school AP Teachers, Rice University (Summer 2011, Summer 2012)

Presenter at Teaching American History Grant workshop for area teachers, Rice University (Summer 2011)

Panelist for teacher workshop on Abraham Lincoln, organized by Channel 8 PBS and TEA for Texas high school history teachers (January 15, 2009)

Met with editorial board for KPRC Local 2 (NBC affiliate station) to offer expertise on the Civil War for an on-air editorial by the station manager (September 15, 2011)

Speaker for Civic Humanist Program, Rice University. Spoke to high school students at Empowerment College Preparatory High School (March 23, 2012), Yates High School (April 27, 2012), Austin High School (February 25, 2013), and Davis High School (April 9, 2013), about the Civil War and emancipation in Houston

Delivered remarks at closing reception for “Discovering the Civil War,” a National Archives traveling exhibit at Houston Museum of Natural Science (April 16, 2012)