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History Department
Ben Davidson

Ben Davidson

Visiting Assistant Professor of History
Lippman Hall
davidsob@union.edu
History

Research interests

I am a historian of 19th- and 20th-century U.S. history. My research employs a wide range of methodological approaches in order to investigate shifting meanings of freedom within daily, lived experiences. With particular attention to race, family, childhood, and memory, my first book manuscript, Freedom’s Generation: Coming of Age in the Era of Emancipation, tells the stories of the generation of children from across the United States who grew up during and immediately after the legal end of slavery. I am also working on projects about religious freedom and the end of slavery and banking, memory, and the possibilities of historical justice.

Teaching interests

I teach courses across the chronological span of U.S. history. In my teaching, I enjoy sharing primary source documents with students throughout the semester—including letters, diaries, photographs, videos, literature, and more—as these kinds of encounters with first-hand perspectives from the past inspired my own ongoing fascination with history.

Publications

Freedom’s Generation: Coming of Age in the Era of Emancipation, book manuscript in progress.

“The Right to Childhood and the Process of Emancipation in the American Civil War,” Civil War History 69, no. 3 (2023), 32-55.

Book reviews in Journal of Southern History, Civil War Book Review, Civil War History, and Journal of African American History.

Areas of interest

19th- and 20th-Century U.S. History, Civil War and Reconstruction, Slavery and Emancipation, History of Childhood, Historical Memory and Historical Justice, Race and Racism, African American History, History of Capitalism, Public History.

Academic credentials

BA, Williams College (History and English); PhD, New York University (U.S. History)