My research interests include steamboats, slavery, the Civil War, the  South, and sports in America. My book, The Devil's Own Purgatory: The United States Mississippi Squadron in the Civil War, will be published in Fall 2025 with LSU Press. The Mississippi Squadron was the Union's second largest fleet and its sailors fought a series of overlapping wars against Confederate forts, guerrillas, and civilians. This project has given me the opportunity to use spatial analysis (or GIS) to understand the nature of the conflict. I have also employed student researchers to examine naval muster rolls in order to compile a database of 16,000 sailors who served in the Mississippi Squadron. I've published a short piece on Union gunboats for the The Conversation (and have also written about Harriet Tubman and Hank Greenberg in the same venue).

I collaborate with graduate students and undergraduates in my scholarship. I worked with an undergraduate student to publish an article in the Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation. This piece details an unusual instance of military emancipation that resulted in the recording of demographic information for 960 enslaved people, including their names, ages, and birth places. I'm currently working with a graduate student on a dataset that we will submit to the same journal.

I've written two books: Steamboats and the Rise of the Cotton Kingdom (LSU Press, 2011) and A Troublesome Commerce: The Transformation of the Interstate Slave Trade (LSU Press, 2003). A few years ago, I appeared on the TV Show "Who Do You Think You Are?" as a historical expert and met Jim Parsons. I've also published an article about a baseball team and the memory of the Civil War (it is referenced here) and a piece about the connection between football and the promotion of patriotic values.

My undergraduate courses include the first half of the American survey, the Civil War Era, the American Military Experience, Southern History, Slavery in the Americas, and the capstone course as American Sport History. For graduate students I teach a readings seminar. In my Civil War Era course, students often do a Reacting to the Past project in order to learn more about the secession crisis and I incorporate a number of active learning assignments into my classes.

I support graduate student training in American History and, to an extent, digital history. I am willing to take on one or two graduate students per year who largely work in the thesis track or the non-thesis track. In any given year, I serve on two or three committees as a minor field member. Graduate students who are interested in working with me should email me for an introductory meeting before applying to the program.