Education

Ph.D., University of Michigan

Teaching areas

Early America, the American Revolution, ideas about age

Selected publications and projects 

Book:

From Revolution to Reunion: The Reintegration of the South Carolina Loyalists (University of South Carolina Press, 2016)

• Winner of the 2016 George C. Rogers Jr. Award
• Named to the Journal of the American Revolution’s 100 Best Books on the American Revolution list

Edited Volume:

The Consequences of Loyalism: Essays in Honor of Robert M. Calhoon, co-edited with Joseph S. Moore (University of South Carolina Press, 2019)

Selected Peer Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters:

“Thomas Jefferson and the Quest for Legacy,” in The Spirit of Inquiry in the Age of Jefferson: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 110, Part 2 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society Press, 2021) 313-327.

“Loyalists and the American Revolution.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. Oxford University Press, 2014—Article published April 26, 2021. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.848.

“History of the American South,” in Maggi M. Morehouse, ed., Routledge Handbook of the American South (New York: Routledge 2017) 8-20.

Public Writing:

“Even George Washington faced questions about his age and mental fitness: Questions confronting Trump and Biden are nothing new,” Washington Post, August 7, 2020

Rebecca Brannon, Lauren Duval, and Kacy Tillman, “Women Also Know Loyalists,” May 6, 2020, Borealia: A Group Blog on Early Canadian History

“OI Books: Fertile Thoughts About Fertility,” Uncommon Sense, the blog of the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture, August 13, 2018

“Getting Old in the Young Republic,” The American Historian (May 2016) 27-31.

Major Fellowships

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship

Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies (Monticello)
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, Virginia Historical Society
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, Massachusetts Historical Society

Selected Media

Season Finale of Who Do You Think You Are? on TLC with Matthew Morrison, air date Dec. 17, 2018

“Was the Revolutionary War America’s First Civil War? The Fabric of History Podcast for the Bill of Rights Institute, April 2022

“Age and the American Revolution,” Lectures in American History, C-Span, May 29, 2021

 “Life After the Declaration of Independence,” C-Span American History TV, initial air date Sept. 2019

The Divided States of America? The History of an Often Disjointed Union, Backstory 

With Good Reason, NPR, American Presidents Episode, January 6, 2018

Ben Franklin’s World, Episode 126, podcast, March 2017

Coastline live show on NPR Wilmington, NC affiliate, January 2017 

Madison Scholars profile “Taking on Tomorrow,” Episode 6, James Madison University, January 2016   

Bill O’Reilly’s Legends and Lies: The American Patriots, Francis Marion episode, 2016