Jacob Calhoun
PhD Candidate at the University of Virginia studying emancipation and Reconstruction.
About
As a PhD Candidate at the University of Virginia studying the history of the Civil War, emancipation, and African American politics during Reconstruction, I have a deep passion for understanding the complexities of this pivotal time in American history. I have a commitment to rigorous research, inclusive pedagogy, and public engagement. I strive to use my scholarship and teaching to address inequality and work toward social and racial justice. I am a native of the Deep South, with roots in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and when I'm not working, you can probably find me designing tabletop games or spending time with my family: Rosie and Gumbo.
Graduate Training
Doctor of Philosophy
Field: History
2019-2024
University of Virginia
Dissertation Title: "Reconstruction through Rifles: The Role of Violence in Black Americans' Fight for Liberty in the Postemancipation Era"
Committee: Justene Hill Edwards, Caroline Janney, Elizabeth Varon, Kidada Williams
Master of Arts
Field: History
2019-2021
University of Virginia
Master's Essay: "Canonniers and Cane Knives: The Violence of Black Citizenship of the Donaldsonville Incident of 1870"
Adviser: Justene Hill Edwards
Master of Arts
Field: US History
2016-2018
University of Maryland- College Park
Master's Essay: Cultivating Politics: The Formation of a Black Body Politic in the Postemancipation Louisiana Sugar Parishes"
Adviser: Christopher Bonner
Bachelor of Arts
Major: History with Honors
2012-2016
Loyola University New Orleans
Thesis: "Eatin' Cotton: The Story of the Jacksonville, Alabama Cotton Mill and Its Workers
Adviser: Mark Fernandez
Experience
Researcher
2021 - Present
Memory Project- Karsh Institute of Democracy
Led research team in uncovering the history of enslavement and human trafficking in Charlottesvillle.
Teaching Assistant
2020- 2023
University of Virginia
Courses Taught: Democracy in Danger, American Slavery, Modern US Legal History, Modern China
Instructor
2019-2021
University of Maryland College Park
Courses Taught: History of Public Health, Senior Capstone
Teaching Assistant
2016-2018
University of Maryland- College Park
Courses Taught: History of Public Health, History of Medicine
Publications
"Disarming Reconstruction: Louisiana Planters Embrace U.S. Military Intervention to Corral Sweeping Social Changes in their Parish," America's Civil War (Forthcoming)
“The Black Lawmen of Reconstruction,” Nau Center for Civil War History Blog, University of Virginia, June 13, 2023.
Book Review of The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality by Anna Lisa Cox, Indiana Magazine of History 118, no. 4 (December 2022).
Book Review of The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation by Thavolia Glymph, Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 62, no. 2 (Spring 2021): 240-24.
Virginia, June 13, 2023.
Conferences
“Pistols and Politics: Black Resistance during the Twilight of Reconstruction.” The Southern Historical Association 89th Annual Meeting Charlotte, North Carolina November 9-12, 2023
“‘They Would Carry Their Flag to Victory’: Black Self-Armament and the Opelousas Massacre of 1868” Slavery Past, Present & Future: Seventh Global Meeting Webster University Ghana, Accra, Ghana July 2-8, 2023
“Canonniers and Cane Knives: The Violence of Black Citizenship and the Donaldsonville Incident of 1870” The Society of Civil War Historians Conference Philadelphia, Pennsylvania June 2-4, 2022
"Falsely Framing the Narrative: Louisiana Newspapers in the Reconstruction Period" Symposium on the Nineteenth Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Chattanooga, Tennessee November 7-9, 2019
Digital Projects
Jacques Cartier's Intrusions
UVA - MapScholar, Fall 2019
Visualizing Rowlandson's Removes
Produced in concert with S. Max Edelson’s Geospatial Visualization Course, University of Virginia ArcGIS Fall 2019
"The March on Donaldsonville” StoryMaps Project (Forthcoming)
Part of “Mapping Reconstruction Violence,” UVA ArcGIS, Publication set for April 2024
Remembering the Yamasee War
UVA ArcGIS, Fall 2019
The March on Donaldsonville (Interactive Map)
Advised by Laurent Dubois, UVA ArcGIS, Spring 2021
“RPG: Confederacy” Podcast Project (Forthcoming)
UVA- Scholar’s Lab, First Episode set for release January 2024
Current Projects
"Reconstruction Through Rifles: The Role of Violence in Black Americans' Fight for Liberty in the Postemancipation Era"
This dissertation project explores how Black southerners operated as the military and political vanguard of the Reconstruction South, specifically examining how freedpeople wielded measured force to combat white terrorism in the postemancipation South. Using Louisiana as a case-study, this project challenges us to understand how federal troops' frequent inability or unwillingness to protect Black southerners from white terrorists meant that freedpeople had to take up arms themselves to secure their lives and citizenship rights and to prop up the federal project of Reconstruction themselves. The project nears completion, and I am currently in talks with UNC- Chapel Hill Press to convert the dissertation into a book.
Mapping Reconstruction Violence
Having originated as an extension of my dissertation research, this digital project aims to geospatially visualize and contextualize multiple, forgotten clashes between Black militiamen and white terrorists across the postemancipaiton South. The project is conceptualized as being both aimed at scholars and the public as it will ideally not only present detailed narratives of the battle for Reconstruction, but will also serve as a resource for scholars seeking to better understand the scale of white terrorism in the postemancipation South, as well as Black Americans combating of such violence. My soon to be published StoryMaps Project "The March on Donaldsonville," will serve as an example of what his project, conceptualized as being hosted on ArcGIS, might look like.
RPG: Confederacy
"RPG: Confederacy" will explore how people have historically gamified the U.S. Civil War and continue to do so through mediums such as board games, videogames of various genres, theater, and dramatic reenactments. The focus of the podcast, as suggested by its title, will be the specific and surprisingly widespread practice of people “roleplaying” as either soldiers in the Confederate States of America or as the governmental body of the Confederacy itself. By interviewing participants of diverse backgrounds, identities, and experiences that participate or engage with these practices, the podcast seeks to interrogate the moral quandaries, supposed historical benefits, and potential harms of roleplaying confederates and/or the confederacy. The first episode, exploring the online multiplayer videogame "War of Rights" and its surrounding communities, will release in January 2024.