Staff Profiles

Introduction

I joined the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology in September 2013.  Most of my teaching and research centres on the American South between the Civil War and the 1920s. 

Qualifications

Ph.D. in History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2003

M.A. in Folklore, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1995

B.A. in English, Clemson University, 1992

B.A. in English, Clemson University, 1992

Previous Positions

2019-2022, Reader in American History, Newcastle University

2013-2019, Lecturer in Modern American History, Newcastle University

2004-2013, Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in United States History, Royal Holloway, University of London

2004, Visiting Lecturer, University of Wisconsin-Superior

2003, Teaching Fellow, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Current Research

My current research focuses on Black abolitionists in Britain and Ireland, especially Moses Roper (see this article in Slavery and Abolition from 2022: https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2022.2027656).  For more about my current research, see my website: http://bruceebaker.com/research.htm.

Research Supervision

I would be interested in supervising research students in any area I have done research, especially race relations, Reconstruction, labor history, and business history, especially the cotton industry.

• Articles

  • Sweeney F, Baker BE. ‘I am not a beggar’: Moses Roper, Black Witness and the Lost Opportunity of British Abolitionism. Slavery and Abolition 2022, 43(3), 632-667.
  • Baker B. Why North Carolinians Are Tar Heels: A New Explanation. Southern Cultures 2015, 21(4), 81-94.
  • Baker BE. The Growth of Towns after the Civil War and the Casualization of Black Labor, 1865-1880. Tennessee Historical Quarterly 2014, 72(4), 289-300.
  • Baker BE. "A recourse that could be depended upon": Picking Blackberries and Getting By after the Civil War. Southern Cultures 2010, 16(4), 21-40.
  • Baker BE. How W.E.B. DuBois Won the United Daughters of the Confederacy Essay Contest. Southern Cultures 2009, 15(1), 69-81.
  • Baker BE. Lynch Law Reversed: The Rape of Lula Sherman, the Lynching of Manse Waldrop, and the Debate Over Lynching in the 1880s. American Nineteenth Century History 2005, 6(3), 273-293.
  • Baker BE. Up Beat Down South: "The Death of Emma Hartsell". Southern Cultures 2003, 9(1), 82-91.
  • Baker BE. The "Hoover Scare" in South Carolina, 1887: An Attempt to Organize Black Farm Labor. Labor History 1999, 40(3), 261-282.

• Authored Books

  • Emberton C, Baker BE, Brundage WF. Remembering reconstruction: Struggles over the meaning of America’s most turbulent era. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017.
  • Baker BE, Hahn B. The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-century New York and New Orleans. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016.
  • Baker BE, Kelly B, Smith JD. After slavery: Race, labor, and citizenship in the reconstruction south. University Press of Florida, 2013.
  • Baker BE. This Mob Will Surely Take My Life: Lynching in the Carolinas, 1871-1947. London: Continuum, 2008.

• Book Chapters

  • Baker BE. Wade Hampton’s last parade: Memory of reconstruction in the 1970 South Carolina tricentennial. In: Remembering Reconstruction: Struggles over the Meaning of America's Most Turbulent Era. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017, pp.262-280.
  • Baker BE. Drovers, Distillers, and Democrats: Economic and Political Change in Northern Greenville County, 1865-1878. In: Baker, BE, Kelly, B, ed. After Slavery: Race, Labor, and Citizenship in the Reconstruction South. Florida: University Press of Florida, 2013, pp.159-175.
  • Baker BE. Under the Rope: Lynching and Memory in Laurens County, South Carolina. In: W. Fitzhugh Brundage, ed. Where These Memories Grow: History, Memory and Southern Identity. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000, pp.319-346.

• Edited Book

  • Baker BE, ed. The South at Work: Observations from 1904 by William Garrott Brown. South Carolina, USA: University of South Carolina Press, 2014.

• Reviews

  • Baker BE. Brian P. Luskey. Men Is Cheap: Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil War America. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. 296. Cloth $34.95, e-book $26.99. American Historical Review 2022, 127(3), 1528-1529.
  • Baker BE. Fires on shipboard: Sandbars, salvage fraud, and the cotton trade in New Orleans in the 1870s. Journal of Southern History 2020, 86(3), 601-624.

• Working Paper

  • Baker BE. Hiram F. Hover's Attempts to Perfect the New South, 1885-1889. 2005.