Associate Fellow, Dr Lydia Plath

Lydia Plath  

 
Research Interests

My principle research interests are in Southern culture, in particular white conceptions of masculinity and race, and the ways in which these notions could lead to violence. My thesis focused on white men’s fears about potential slave rebels in Mississippi in the summer of 1835, arguing that the execution of white men, including slaveholders, in this case, demonstrates the fluidity and complexity of racial and gender identity in the antebellum South. My current research focuses on Southern ideas of race, gender, and the body, with a particular focus on racially-motivated violence, from the colonial period to the present. I am especially interested in the socio-cultural significance of the various methods used to punish African American men for perceived racial transgressions—in particular ‘burning alive,’ or execution by fire—and the ways in which attitudes towards death, punishment, and the body could be both gendered and racialised.

Email: tba

 

Academic Profile

  • 2010-2012: Lecturer, School of Humanities: History, University of Glasgow
  • 2009-2010: Teaching Fellow, History Department, University of Warwick
  • 2009-2010: Module Convenor, School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester
  • 2009-2010: Teaching Assistant, School of American and Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham
  • 2007-2009: Part-Time Tutor, History Department, University of Warwick
  • 2009: PhD in History, ‘Performances of Honour: Manhood and Violence in the Mississippi Slave Insurrection Scare of 1835’, University of Warwick
  • 2009: Introduction to Academic and Professional Practice: Postgraduate Award, Learning and Development Centre, University of Warwick
  • 2007: MA by Research in History, with Distinction, ‘“Not one Black was spared that Fell into their Hands”: North Carolina’s Reaction to the Nat Turner Rebellion’, University of Warwick
  • 2005: BA in History, with First Class Honours, including a year abroad at the University of California: Los Angeles, University of Warwick

Fellowships, Grants, Competitions and Awards

  • Conference and Research Support Grant, History, University of Glasgow (April 2012, October 2011, December 2010)
  • Carnegie Research Grant (July 2011)Overseas Conference Grant, British Academy (January 2010)
  • Roberts Postdoctoral Project Development Grant, Arts Faculty, University of Warwick (January-March 2010)
  • Early Career Fellowship, Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick (September 2009-2010)
  • Doctoral Award, Arts and Humanities Research Council (2006-2009)
  • Workshop/Conference Grant, Royal Historical Society (June 2008)
  • Initiatives and Conference Fund, Economic History Society (June 2008)
  • Warwick Postgraduate History Symposium Competition, University of Warwick (February 2008)
  • Archie K. Davis Fellowship, North Caroliniana Society (2006)
  • Research Preparation Master’s Award, Arts and Humanities Research Council (2005-2006)

Publications

  • Encyclopaedia Entry: ‘White Mob Violence’, in Leslie Alexander and Walter Rucker (eds), Encyclopedia of African American History(ABC-CLIO: March 2010)
  • ‘Honour, Race and Violence in the Mississippi Slave Insurrection Scare of 1835’ in ‘Conceptualising Men: Collective Identities and the ‘Self’ in the History of Masculinity’, Ex Historia, 2 (2010)
  • ‘North Carolina and Nat Turner: Honour and Violence in a Slave Insurrection Scare’, in Lydia Plath & Sergio Lussana (eds), Black and White Masculinity in the American South, 1800-2000 (Cambridge Scholars Publishing: June 2009)
  • Article Project: ‘“Every manly sentiment”: Notions of honour and the lynching of the gamblers at Vicksburg in 1835’ [submitted to American Nineteenth Century History, January 2012, awaiting second reader’s report]
  • Article Project: ‘‘Ethical and Practical Issues when using Lynching Photographs in the Classroom’ [working title, research in progress, to be published by the Higher Education Academy]
  • Book Project: One Summer in Mississippi: White Men, White Manhood, and an Antebellum Slave Insurrection Scare [working title; under consideration with Louisiana State University Press]
  • Book Project: The Sudden Smell of Burning Flesh: Lynching and Burning and Their Audiences, c.1800 to the Present [working title, research in progress]
  • Article Project: ‘Rethinking Honour in the Antebellum South’ [working title, research in progress]
  • Article Project: ‘Edward Isham’s Honour: Manhood and Class in the Antebellum South’ [working title, research in progress].

Book Reviews

  • ‘Steven Lubet, Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial’, Journal of American Studies, 45:4 (2011)
  • ‘Christopher Waldrep, African Americans Confront Lynching: Strategies of Resistance from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Era’, Slavery and Abolition, 32:2 (2011)
  • ‘Victoria E. Bynum, The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and its Legacies,’ Journal of Southern History, 77:3 (2011)
  • ‘Richard Stott, Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-Century America and Nicholas L. Syrett, The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities,’ American Nineteenth Century History, 12:1 (2011)
  • ‘William Dusinberre, Strategies For Survival: Recollections of Bondage in Antebellum Virginia,’ Journal of American History, 97:3 (2010)
  • ‘Donald E. Reynolds, Texas Terror: The Slave Insurrection Panic of 1860 and the Secession of the Lower South’, Slavery and Abolition, 30:3 (2009)
  • ‘Ken Gonzales-Day, Lynching in the West, 1850-1935’, Slavery and Abolition, 28:3 (2007)
  • Forthcoming: ‘John Lockwood and Charles Lockwood, Siege of Washington: The Untold Story of the Twelve Days that Shook the Union’, Journal of American Studies
  • Forthcoming: ‘Hannah Rosen, Terror in the Heart of Freedom: Citizenship, Sexual Violence, and the Meaning of Race in the Postemancipation South,’ American Nineteenth Century History
  • Forthcoming: ‘L. Diane Barnes, Brian Schoen and Frank Towers, The Old South’s Modern Worlds: Slavery, Region and Nation in the Age of Progress’, Journal of Early American History
  • Forthcoming: ‘Timothy R. Buckner and Peter Caster (eds), Fathers, Preachers, Rebels, Men: Black Masculinity in U.S. History and Literature 1820-1945’, Journal of American History
  • Forthcoming: ‘John Craig Hammond & Matthew Mason (eds), Contesting Freedom: The Politics of Bondage & Freedom in the New American Nation and Molly Oshatz, Slavery & Sin: the Fight against slavery & the rise of Liberal Protestantism’, Slavery and Abolition
  • Forthcoming: ‘Gretchen A. Adams, The Specter of Salem: Remembering the Witch Trials in Nineteenth-Century America’, Women’s History Review

Conferences, Workshops and Presentations

  • Forthcoming: ‘Edward Isham’s Honour: Manhood and Class in the Antebellum South’, Institute of Historical Research American History Seminar Series (March 2013)
  • ‘Honor, Manhood and the Mississippi Slave Insurrection Scare of 1835’, American Historical Association Annual Meeting (Jan 2012)
  • ‘A “manly sentiment”? Notions of honour and the lynching of the gamblers at Vicksburg in 1835’; American History Workshop, University of Edinburgh (January 2011)
  • ‘Rethinking Honour and Class in the Antebellum South’, Association of British American Nineteenth Century Historians Annual Conference, University of Liverpool (October 2010)
  • ‘Performing Honour: Notions of Manhood and the Lynching of the Gamblers at Vicksburg’, British Association of American Studies Conference, University of East Anglia (April 2010)
  • ‘Violating the Black Body: Death and Punishment in the Slave South’, Charting New Courses in the History of Slavery and Emancipation, Center for the Study of the Gulf South, Mississippi (March 2010)
  • ‘Vigilantism, Honour, and Community during a Mississippi Slave Insurrection Scare’, Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting, Louisville (November 2009)
  • ‘Race, Death and Punishment in the Atlantic World’, Rethinking Africa and the Atlantic World: British Group in Early American History Annual Conference, University of Stirling (September 2009)
  • Conceptualising Men: Collective Identities and the ‘Self’ in the History of Masculinity, University of Exeter (July 2009)
  • ‘“In the Spirit of the Law”: Lynching and Vigilante Justice in a Mississippi Frontier Community’, From Borderland to Backcountry: Frontier Communities in Comparative Perspective, University of Dundee (July 2009)
  • ‘“Let the fire be slow!” The Lynching of African Americans in the Antebellum South’, British Association of American Studies Conference, University of Nottingham (April 2009)
  • ‘“A work of massacre and carnage, conflagration and blood” – Controlling deviance with violence in a Mississippi insurrection scare’, Social History Society Annual Conference, University of Warwick (April 2009)
  • ‘To suffer them any longer would have proved us to be destitute of every manly sentiment’: Honour and the lynching of the professional gamblers at Vicksburg’, European Early American Studies Association Conference, Palazzo Pesaro-Papafava, Venice (December 2008)
  • ‘The Mississippi Insurrection Scare of 1835: A Matter of Honour?’, Association of British American Nineteenth Century Historians Annual Conference, University of Leicester (September 2008)
  • Men's Dilemma? Sources and Methodologies in the History of Masculinity, University of Exeter (July 2008)
  • Medicine and New Media, Centre for the History of Medicine Summer School, University of Warwick (July 2008)
  • ‘An Impervious Necessity Compelled Them to Act’: Southern Honour and the Mississippi Insurrection Scare of 1835’, Masculinity in the American South Symposium, University of Warwick (June 2008)
  • ‘The Mississippi Insurrection Scare of 1835: A Matter of Honour?’, North Carolina Graduate Student History Conference, North Carolina State University (February 2008)
  • ‘Vigilance and Violence: North Carolina’s Reaction to the Nat Turner Rebellion’, History Postgraduate Conference, University of Warwick (May 2006)

Public Lectures, Workshops, and Teaching-Related Activities

  • ‘Ethical and Practical Issues when using Lynching Photographs in the Classroom’, Teaching North American History Workshop, History Subject Centre, Manchester Metropolitan University (March 2012)
  • ‘The History of White Supremacy in the United States’, Lewis Lyons Memorial Lecture, Hutcheson’s Grammar School, Glasgow (Feb 2012)
  • To Kill A Mockingbird: Fifty Years On, University of Glasgow (November 2010)
  • ‘Transition from Postgraduate student to Teacher: Issues and Opportunities’, Teaching North American History Workshop, History Subject Centre, University of Manchester (June 2010)
  • ‘What’s the Point in History?’ Aimhigher Summer School Session, University of Warwick (August 2006)