Ph.D., August 2004.  University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.  History.

Dissertation: “The Old Army in War and Peace: West Pointers and the Civil War Era, 1814-1865,” directed by Gary W. Gallagher and Edward L. Ayers.

 

M.A., January 2002.  University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.  History.

 

B. A., 2000, magna cum laude.  Yale University, New Haven, CT.  History.

NON-ACADEMIC WORK EXPERIENCE

Detailed to the Department of State during the 2008/9 academic year to serve as the Tuz Satellite (FOB Bernstein) Lead for the Salah ad Din Provincial Reconstruction Team in Iraq.  Served as the senior civilian US Government official assigned to Tuz, and worked primarily on ethnic political issues in the district.

PUBLICATIONS

West Pointers and the Civil War: The Old Army in War and Peace. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
      - Winner of 2009 New York Military Affairs Symposium Civil War Book Award

“Total War and the American Civil War Reconsidered: The End of an Outdated ‘Master Narrative.’” Journal of the Civil War Era 1 (Sept., 2011): 394-408.

“Being Feared and Not Being Hated Can Go Together Very Well”: The Problem of Population Control and Legitimacy in Stability Operations.  Small Wars Journal 6 (Feb., 2010): 1-6.
      - Grand Prize Winner for Small Wars Journal Writing Competition (Topic 1)

“The Civil War Era: Redeemer President and Warrior Prophet; Abraham Lincoln, William T. Sherman, and Evangelical Protestantism.” In Prophesies of Godlessness: Predictions of America’s Imminent Secularization, from the Puritans to Postmodernity, edited by Charles T. Mathewes and Christopher McKnight Nichols, 75-94. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

“‘I Owe Virginia Little, My Country Much”: Robert E. Lee, the United States Regular Army, and Unconditional Unionism.” In Crucible of the Civil War: Virginia from Secession to Commemoration, edited by Gary Gallagher, Edward L Ayers, and Andrew W. Torget, 35-57. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006. 

"Christian Love and Martial Violence: Baptists and War--Danger and Opportunity." In Virginia's Civil War, edited by Peter Wallenstein and Bertram Wyatt-Brown, 87-100.  Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005.

 Commander's Award for Civilian Service, 3 BSTB, Department of the Army, June 10, 2009

 Meritorious Honor Award, U.S. Department of State, Embassy Baghdad, June 2009

 Grand Prize Winner, Question 1, Small Wars Journal Writing Competition, Feb. 2010

 New York Military Affairs Symposium Civil War Book Award for West Pointers and the Civil War, 2009.

 Henry Chauncey Jr. '57 Fellow, Brady-Johnson Grand Strategy Program, International Security Studies, Yale University, 2011 Calendar Year

 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Yale University’s Whitney Humanities Center,  2004/5 academic year.

 Naval Academy Research Council Seed Grant (Summer 2006, Summer 2007, Summer 2010).

 Jacob K. Javits Fellowship for the 2000/1, 2001/2, 2002/3, and 2003/4 academic years.

 Honorary 2000 Mellon Fellow in Humanistic Studies.

 E. Francis Riggs Memorial Prize for “demonstrating the best knowledge of general culture by means of the distinction of your performance" (Yale, May 1998).

 David C. DeForest Prize and Townsend Premiums, 2nd Place.  To a Senior “who shall write and pronounce an English oration in the best manner” (Yale, May 2000).

 Bristed Scholarship for “the sophomore standing highest in a competitive examination in Greek” (Yale, May 1999).

 Robert C. Byrd Scholar for California (Yale, 1997 - 2000)

 TEACHING

Current Courses

HH104       American Naval History

HH386       The American Way of War: The Colonial Period to Afghanistan

USNA Honors Thesis Advisees

MIDN Casey Two Bears (2007)

MIDN Christopher Waddell (2008)

MIDN Walter Haydock (2008)

Past Courses

HH262 B         Irregular Warfare in U.S. History

HH205           Western Civilization: Culture, Ethics, and Society to 1776

HH215          The West in a Global Context: Pre-History to the Enlightenment

HH485E        U.S. Unconventional Warfare (Independent Study)

HH347          Civil War, Reconstruction, and Gilded Age

 

2004/2005 Academic Year: Directed Studies – History and Politics, Yale University

·         This year-long course covered western historical and political thought from antiquity to the present in Yale’s special first-year undergraduate program on western civilization, Directed Studies.  I was one of seven faculty members teaching sections in the program.

 

BOOK REVIEWS

 A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America, by Brian Balogh. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Canadian Journal of History, 46, Winter 2011, pp. 716-17

 The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War, by Donald J. Stoker. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Journal of Military History, 75, January 2011, pp. 278-80. Military History of the West, 40, 2010, pp. 152

 Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863-1865, by Ethan S. Rafuse. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2008. Journal of Southern History, 76, November 2010, pp. 1024-25.

 America’s Civil War: The Operational Battlefield, 1861-1863, by Brian Holden Reid.  Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2008. Journal of Military History, 74, July 2010, pp. 929-30.

 Sacred Ties: From West Point Brothers to Battlefield Rivals: A True Story of the American Civil War, by Tom Carhart.  New York: Berkley Caliber, 2010.  Civil War Book Review, Summer 2010, at http://www.cwbr.com/index.php?q=3649&field=ID&browse=yes&record=full&searching=yes&Submit=Search.

 Commanding Lincoln’s Navy: Union Naval Leadership during the Civil War, by Stephen R. Taaffe. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2009. Military History of the West 40 (2010), pp. 125-26.

 “Execute Against Japan”: The U.S. Decision to Conduct Unrestricted Submarine Warfare, by Joel Ira Holwitt. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2009. Military History of the West 40 (2010), pp. 152-53.

 Slavery, Emancipation, and Freedom: Comparative Perspectives, by Stanley L. Engerman.  Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007.  Labor History, 49, November 2008, pp. 516-18.

 From Conciliation to Conquest: The Sack of Athens and the Court-Martial of Colonel John B. Turchin, by George C. Bradley and Richard L. Dahlen. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006.  Journal of Southern History, 74, February 2008, pp. 193-94.

 Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee through His Private Letters, by Elizabeth Brown Pryor. New York: Viking, 2007.  The Weekly Standard, 12, August 25, 2007.

 Civil War Petersburg: Confederate City in the Crucible of War, by A. Wilson Greene, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006. Civil War Book Review, Summer 2007, at http://www.cwbr.com/cgi-bin/dbman/cwbr/cwbr.cgi?db=cwbr&uid=default&bool=and&keyword=&ISBN=&Title=&Auth_1=&Publisher=&Reviewer=&Issue_date=Summer+2007&Record_type=---&sb1=12&so1=descend&view_records=View+Records&nh=8&mh=1

 Commander of All Lincoln’s Armies: A Life of General Henry W. Halleck, by John F. Marszalek. Cambridge, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004.  Canadian Journal of History, 41, Spring/Summer 2006, pp. 153-55.

 Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861-1864, by Earl J. Hess. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.  North Carolina Historical Review, 82, October 2005, pp. 519-20.

Nations Divided: America, Italy, and the Southern Question, by Don H. Doyle. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002.  Civil War History, 52, June 2006, pp. 193-95.

The Railroad and the State: War, Politics, and Technology in Nineteenth-Century America, by Robert G. Angevine. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. H-War, H-Net Reviews, February 2005.

URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=67021116878198.

Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War, by R. J. Blackett. Baton Rogue: Louisiana State University Press, 2000. Civil War History, 49, June 2003, pp. 188-89.

 

PAPER PRESENTATIONS

“Rationalizing War in America: Reconciling the National Security State and the ‘Liberal Conscience,’”  International Security Studies Colloquium, Yale University, October 18, 2011

“Regular and Irregular Warfare in Historical Context,” Irregular Warfare in the 21^st Century Symposium, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Washington, DC, March 31, 2011.

“Looking beyond West Point: Life in the Old Army as Education for War,” Cultivating Army Leaders: Historical Perspectives Conference, Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center (Fort Leavenworth, KS), 21 September 2010.

“Bureaucracy, Order, and Discipline: Russell Weigley's The American Way of War Revisited,” University of Kentucky History Department (Lexington, KY), 23 October 2009.

“Military Knowledge and Professionalism at West Point Before the Civil War,” Society of Military Historians Annual Meeting (Frederick, MD), 21 April 2007.

“The Answer He Was Born to Make?” [Lecture on Robert E. Lee’s decision to secede], Symposium: The Answers They Were Born to Make: Choosing Sides in the Civil War, Sponsored by the Museum of the Confederacy and the Library of Virginia (Richmond, VA), 24 February 2007.

“Disorderly and Unconventional Warfare: The Legacy of the Indian Wars,” Yale International Security Studies Colloquium in International History and Security (New Haven, CT), 13 February 2007.

“What Civil War Military History Ought to Be,” Southern Historical Association Meeting (Birmingham, AL), 17 November 2006.

 "The Old Army in War and Peace: West Pointers and the Civil War Era, 1814-1865,” Seventh Annual Triangle Institute for Security Studies New Faces Conference (Chapel Hill, NC), 16 September 2006.

“The Problem of ‘Demoralization’: Virginia Baptists' Distrust of War in 1860/1861,” Douglas Southall Freeman and Southern Intellectual History Conferences (Richmond, VA), 23 February 2002

 

ACADEMIC SERVICE (USNA)

Phi Alpha Theta Committee (Fall 05 – present / Chair beginning Fall 2009)

Awards Committee (2009/10)

Midshipmen Awards (2011/12)

Naval and Military History Committee (Fall 06 – present)

Research and Sabbatical Committee (Fall 05 – Spring 08)

Library Liaison (Fall 05 – Spring 08)

 

LANGUAGES

Reading knowledge of French and German, two years of college-level Classical Greek, basic proficiency in spoken Mandarin Chinese and very basic knowledge of written characters.