Peter S. Carmichael
Professor
202 C Woodburn Hall
293-2421 Ext. 5222
Ph.D. 1996, Pennsylvania State University
Teaching Experience:
Professor, West Virginia University, 2007-
Associate Professor, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2005-2007.
Assistant Professor, Western Carolina University, 1997-2000.
Instructor, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia 1996-97
Instructor, The Pennsylvania State University, 1995
Research Interests:
My recent book: The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion is one of the few scholarly sudies that follow the trajectory of a Southern generation across the divide of the Civil War. My work pursues such a course in order to better understand how Southern identity was constructed and reshaped in response to changing political and economic circumstances. Much of the literature on the creation of Southern identity unfortunately sees identity as an autonomous cultural force that drives people to act politically without sufficiently accounting for how people's collective identities grow out of class interests and material conditions. My work operates from the assumption that the self-identities of the last generation cannot be understood in isolation from power relations inside Virginia and within the nation at large. In fact, their sense of being Virginian and Southern did not dictate their political action. They constructed and remodelled ideas about what it meant to be a man, a Virginian, a Southerner, and a citizen of the United States in relationship to their membership in the South's ruling class and that class's struggle for economic and political power.
Current Project
My next book project , "Black Rebels" will explore the experience of slaves who served Confederate soliders. This unique master-slave relationship within Southern armies has neve been examined by scholars, and to date the subject has only drawn the interest of those who write in the romantic tradition of the Lost Cause. My intention to focus on the master-slave relationship will allow me to examine the traditional subjects of living conditions and resistance. But I also intend to explore uncharted territory such as: how the shared experience of battle reconfigurated the master-slave relationship, what were the symbolic uses of the "camp servant" in Confederate propaganda, how did lower class whites in the army view slaves, and were camp servants a source of division in white ranks? This project is in keeping with my interest in the comstruction and exertion of power in the Old South and the Conderacy.
Other Recent Publications
The historical trajectory of The Last Generation originates with the publication of my first book, Lee's Young Artillerist: William R.J.Pegram, published by the University Press of Virginia in 1995. While most scholars have looked at Civil War officers from a narrow military perspective, my study examines Pegram through a generational approach to understand the worldview of slaveholders who came of age on the eve of the Civil War. I contributed an article to and edited Audacity Personified: The Generalship of Robert E. Lee, which Louisiana State University Press published in March 2004. I am the editor of the Voices of the Civil War series, published by the University of Tennessee Press. This series is one of the most important scholarly series devoted to the publication of primary sources relating to the Civil War. My responsibilities range from reading manuscripts and working with prospective editors to overseeing the scholarly direction of the series. I will also be joining Michele Gilespie and William Link as the series editors of "New Directions in Southern History" that the University of Kentucky Press will unveil in fall 2005.
Awards and Honors
Mellon Research Fellowship, Virginia Historical Society, 2002
Scholar-in Residence at Gettysburg National Military Park, July 11-31, 1999. I organized and led 11 workshops with the historical staff.
Hist 759 Readings in US History 1840-1898
