Professor; Co-editor, Ohio Valley History.

320C McMicken Hall
513-556-5001
christopher.phillips@uc.edu

Professional Summary

My research interests generally are in the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction, more specifically, the American South, with particular interest in the border states during the period. My five published books have focused variously upon slavery and freedom, emancipation, war, race, politics, and memory during and after the Civil War era. They have ranged from a study of the military and political events in the border slave state of Missouri through the life of a controversial military commander there; to a social history of the African American community of Baltimore, Maryland, in the early national and antebellum periods; to the development of sectional identity in the Border West explored through the life and political career of a controversial Missouri governor; to the development of proslavery ideology of a northern-born Missouri supreme court justice. My current book project, tentatively titled "The Rivers Run Backward: The Civil War on the Middle Border and the Making of American Regionalism," will be published with Oxford University Press in 2011. My work, which includes ten published, peer-reviewed articles, has been supported by fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Charles Phelps Taft Center, among other granting agencies. Since 1999, I have served as co-editor of Ohio Valley History, a peer-reviewed quarterly publication of regional history. With my wife, Jill, and two sons, Grayson and Maddox, I live in Glendale, Ohio.

Education

Ph.D., The University of Georgia, 1992.

Books

(2008). The Making of a Southerner: William Barclay Napton's Private Civil War. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press.

With Jason L. Pendleton (2005). The Union on Trial: The Political Journals of William Barclay Napton, 1829-1883. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press.

(2000). Missouri's Confederate: Claiborne Fox Jackson and the Creation of Southern Identity in the Border West. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press.

(1997). Freedom's Port: The African American Community of Baltimore, 1790-1860. Urbana and London: University of Illinois Press.

(1996). Damned Yankee: The Life of Nathaniel Lyon. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press.

(1990). Damned Yankee: The Life of Nathaniel Lyon. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press.

Courses Taught

The Coming Fury: The Sectional Era.

Terrible Swift Sword: The Civil War.

Revolution Gone Backward: Reconstruction.

The American South to 1865.

The American South Since 1865.

Race Relations in American History.