My fields of interest include the American Civil War and its long aftermath, the American South, and the social history of archives. My first book, Routes of War: The World of Movement in the Confederate South, (Harvard University Press, 2012) is an interpretation of the Civil War in the South as an experience of physical mobility and the many different ways through which mobility figured in the social, cultural, and political processes that shaped the war. My second book, War on Record: The Archive and the Afterlife of the Civil War, traces the complex and surprising history of the written record generated by the sectional conflict and managed by the Federal government. In between book projects I have written essays about rumors, emancipation, and the antiwar turn in Civil War scholarship.
At Tel Aviv University I have a joint appointment in the history department and the department of English and American Studies. I teach a range of courses for students on all levels, including:
- Modern African American History
- The South from Civil War to Civil Rights
- Knoweldge and Power in the Historical Archive
- Readings in the History of the Civil War and Reconstruction
- A Social and Cultural History of the American Civil War
- The Civil War: History, Myth and Memory
