Charles F. Irons, Associate Professor of History at Elon University, received the Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia. Irons’s research focuses on the nineteenth-century South, in particular Southern religious history. His book, The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill, 2008) investigates the relationship between enslaved and free blacks’ religious decisions and the pronouncements of evangelical whites, and specifically how these interactions in the ecclesiastical sphere influenced the attitudes of whites in more public settings. Irons’s current research explores the formation of independent black churches in the South after emancipation.

John C. Inscoe, Albert W. Saye Professor of History at the University of Georgia, received the Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina. Inscoe’s research focuses primarily on nineteenth-century Southern Appalachia, most notably issues related to race, slavery, and the Civil War. His books includeMountain Masters: Slavery and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina (1989); Georgia in Black and White: Explorations in the Race Relations of a Southern State, 1865-1950 (1994); andRace, War, and Remembrance in the Appalachian South (2008). Inscoe currently serves as the Secretary-Treasurer of the Southern Historical Association. His forthcoming book, Writing the South through the Self, looks at how students of history can learn about issues of race, gender, poverty, education, family, and community through autobiography.

Steven F. Lawson, Professor Emeritus of History at Rutgers University, received the Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. Lawson’s research focuses on the civil rights movement, especially black politics and the growth of black suffrage. Lawson’s books include Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 1944-1969(1976); In Pursuit of Power: Southern Blacks and Electoral Politics, 1965-1982 (1985); Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics in America Since 1941 (1991); Debating the Civil Rights Movement (With Charles Payne, 1998); and Civil Rights Crossroads: Nation, Community, and the Black Freedom Struggle (2003).

Nancy A. Hewitt, Professor of History and Women’s Studies at Rutgers University, received the Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania. She has published extensively on women’s rights and activism in the nineteenth century, the interplay between gender, religion, and reform, and feminism from a comparative perspective. Her books include Southern Discomfort: Women’s Activism in Tampa, Florida, 1880s-1920s (2001), winner of the Julia Cherry Spruill Prize for best book in Southern women’s history, and Women’s Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822-1872(2002). Hewitt is currently interested in reformulating the grand narrative of American women’s history from Seneca Falls to women’s suffrage by placing events in a global context, and taking into account the activities of African American, Native American, and immigrant female activists.