MDC Faculty

My Background and Interests

I am a historian and a theologian committed to exploring political history, culture, and the consequences of secularization on the modern world. I received my undergraduate degree at Dartmouth College and continued my graduate studies in history at the University of Virginia and at Rutgers University. I pursued seminary studies in philosophy and theology at Saint John's Seminary and continued graduate work in theology at Saint Leo University. I am currently working on a Doctor of Ministry in Spirituality at The Catholic University of America.

As an educator I am dedicated to blending spirituality, religion, and the study of politics and culture in the material I teach my students.  I have taught undergraduate courses in U.S. History, the History of Civilization, and African American History. I have also taught more specialized classes including courses on Slavery and Race and the Early Americas and Atlantic History in the Eighteenth Century. I had the opportunity to co-supervise eight student interns (between September 2017 and April 2018) in creating “Local Stories, National Struggle: The Civil War in Appomattox and Lynchburg”, a collaborative exhibit between students at Lynchburg College and The American Civil War Museum in Appomattox, Virginia. I have published in historical journals, edited collections, and digitally. My first book, The Risen Phoenix: Black Politics in the Postbellum South (University of Virginia Press, 2016) focused on African American congressmen after the Civil War. 

Publications

“Accommodationism” and “Black Political Officeholders,” in Steven A. Reich, ed., The World of Jim Crow America: A Daily Life Encyclopedia, Volume 2: Politics and Warfare to Science and Technology (Santa Barbara, CA and Denver, CO: Greenwood Press, July 2019).

The Risen Phoenix: Black Politics in the Post-Civil War South (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, July 11, 2016).

Written with the Dictionary of Virginia Biography, “John Mercer Langston (1829–1897),” Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, First Published May 26, 2015, http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Langston_John_Mercer_1829-1897.

“Manhood and Freedom in the Sunshine State: Josiah Thomas Walls and Reconstruction Florida,” in Matthew D. Lynch, ed., Before Obama: A Reappraisal of Black Reconstruction Era Politicians, Volume 1: Legacies Lost: The Life and Times of John Roy Lynch and His Political Contemporaries (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012), 47-68.

“From the Ashes of the Old Dominion: Accommodation, Immediacy, and Progressive Pragmatism in John Mercer Langston’s Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 117, No. 3 (2009): 214-49.