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Dr Kevin Waite
(email at kevin.a.waite@durham.ac.uk)
Kevin Waite is a political historian of the 19th century United States with a focus on slavery, imperialism, and the American West. His first book, West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire (UNC Press, 2021), is a study of slaveholding expansion in California and the Far Southwest. It explores how American Southerners extended their labour order and political vision across the continent, and in the process, triggered a series of conflicts that culminated in the Civil War. His next book project, co-authored with Prof. Sarah Barringer Gordon (University of Pennsylvania), reconstructs the life and times of Biddy Mason, a Georgia slave-turned-California real estate entrepreneur. Their work, ‘The Long Road to Freedom: Biddy Mason and the Making of Black Los Angeles’, is funded by a three-year collaborative research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Kevin’s scholarly articles and book chapters have covered a wide range of subjects: manliness in Napoleonic-era English public schools; the political struggle over America’s first transcontinental railroad; the evolving myth of George Armstrong Custer in Hollywood film; the Civil War in Indian Territory; Reconstruction in the trans-Mississippi West; and the Confederate monuments of 20th-century California.
Kevin comments frequently on American history and politics for major media outlets. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, Slate, The New Republic, the Conversation, TIME, and the Washington Post, among others. He has also spoken about his research on television and radio, including interviews with BBC Radio 3, LBC, Metro Radio, National Public Radio in the U.S., and as a talking head for television documentaries on Channel 5 and the Yesterday Channel. For links to his articles, media appearances, and c.v., click here.
Kevin received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016. He also holds degrees from the University of Cambridge (MPhil, Modern European History, 2011) and Williams College (BA, History, English, 2009).
PhD supervision
Kevin welcomes inquiries from prospective students working on a broad range of topics in U.S. history, especially those interested in the American Civil War era, the history of slavery and emancipation, and the American West.
Research Groups
Department of History
Research Projects
Department of History
Publications
Chapter in book
- Waite, Kevin (Forthcoming). 'The West and Reconstruction after the American Civil War'. In The Oxford Handbook on Reconstruction. Slap, Andrew L., ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Waite, Kevin (2019). 'Custer's Last Stands: Remaking an American Frontier Legend in Hollywood Film'. In Writing History with Lightning: Representations of Nineteenth Century America on Film. Inscoe, J. & Hulbert, M., eds. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
- Waite, Kevin (2019). 'War in Indian Country'. In The Cambridge History of the American Civil War. Sheehan-Dean, A., ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1.
Journal Article
- Waite, Kevin (2020). 'The Lost Cause Goes West: Confederate Culture and Civil War Memory in California'. California History 97(1): 33-49.
- Waite, Kevin (2016). 'Jefferson Davis and Proslavery Visions of Empire in the Far West'. The Journal of the Civil War Era 6(4): 536-565.
- Waite, Kevin (2014). 'Beating Napoleon at Eton: Violence, Sport and Manliness in England's Public Schools, 1783-1815'. Cultural and Social History 11(3): 407-424.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
- Waite, Kevin (2021). 'Congress is still littered with insurrectionists'. Slate
- Waite, Kevin (2020). 'California finally sweeps away most of its tributes to the Confederacy. What took so long?'. Los Angeles Times
- Waite, Kevin & Gordon, Sarah Barringer (2020). 'California's forgotten slave history'. Los Angeles Times
- Waite, Kevin & Gordon, Sarah Barringer (2020). 'The other slavery part of Utah's history'. Salt Lake Tribune
- Waite, Kevin (2020). 'UCSF should save this California monument to Black history'. San Francisco Examiner
- Waite, Kevin & Broxton, Jackie (2020). 'Why is UC San Francisco threatening to destroy a monument to California's Black history?'. Los Angeles Times
- Waite, Kevin (2019). 'California's Forgotten Confederate History'. The New Republic
- Waite, Kevin (2019). 'Why it's always Infrastructure Week'. Washington Post
- Waite, Kevin (2018). 'Early California lawmakers also preached #resistance -- against immigration'. Los Angeles Times
- Waite, Kevin (2018). 'Kanye West's rants on slavery align alarmingly well with popular views of American history'. Los Angeles Times
- Waite, Kevin (2018). 'The missing statues that expose the truth about Confederate monuments'. Washington Post
- Waite, Kevin (2017). 'Robert E. Lee WAS a man of honor. That's the problem'. Washington Post
- Waite, Kevin (2017). 'The largest Confederate monument in American can't be taken down'. Washington Post
- Waite, Kevin (2017). 'The struggle over slavery was not confined to the South, L.A. has a Confederate memorial problem too'. Los Angeles Times
Supervises
Teaching Areas
- HIST 1611 The Rise and Fall of American Slavery
- HIST 2922 Conversations with History: Making America's Empire, 1776-1914
- HIST 30N3 Special Subject: The American Civil War and Reconstruction