Journalofthecivilwarera is hiring : Greetings from the New Editor in Knoxville

I am Robert Bland and I am excited to be joining this robust online community around Muster as the Journal’s incoming associate editor for digital content. As a prior contributor and longtime reader of Muster, I deeply value the digital world that has been curated by the past editors of the Journal of the Civil War Era. Here, I want to thank and acknowledge and thank Hilary Green for the tremendous amount of labor she has done to shape the most recent iteration of Muster.

By way of introduction, I am an assistant professor of history and Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. A historian of the emancipation and Reconstruction, I am currently completing a monograph that examines the legacy of the political generation of teachers , Freedmen’s Bureau agents , and aspiring officeholders who travelled to the Lowcountry during the Civil War, established South Carolina’s postbellum Republican Party, and connected this new political world to a nascent, national Black public sphere . The site of a “long Reconstruction ” that persisted into the first decade of the twentieth century , the Lowcountry anchored the production a generational countermemory that not only confronted the myths of the Lost Cause but also guided the archival practice of the scholars that built the modern field of African American history .

In my role as incoming digital editor, I seek to continue the mission of making Muster the premier site for discussion of the Civil War era. Like my predecessors, I want to ensure that Muster remains a place where readers can encounter cutting-edge and original writing, author interviews, and reflections of the meaning of the long Civil War in our current moment. I seek to amplify a wide-range of voices and will try to make Muster a place where both established and early-career scholars can find their footing. Most importantly, I want this to be a place of community and decency where a large online public can gather and discuss important issues with intensity, good faith, and a sense of commonweal.

I look forward to beginning this journey with you. If you ever want to offer feedback or have an idea that you would like to pitch to Muster, you can reach me at rbland4@utk.edu

Robert D. Bland is an Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville

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