CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL CURTIS

CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL CURTIS
Professor of History
Armstrong State University
Hawes Hall 110A
11935 Abercorn Street
Savannah, Georgia 31419
chris.curtis@armstrong.edu
803.535.9655 (C)
912.344.3051 (W)
Education
Emory University, Ph.D. History, 2002
Virginia Tech, M.A. History, 1997
Lynchburg College, College of Education
Teachers Certificate, State Board of Education, Commonwealth of Virginia, 1995
University of South Carolina, B.A. History, 1986
Scholarship
Publications
Books
Jefferson’s Freeholders and the Politics of Ownership in the Old Dominion. (Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Studies on the American South,
April 2012)
Chapters in Edited Collections
“‘Not a judicial act, yet a judicious one’: Honor, Office and Democracy,” in Essays on American
Honor Culture, edited by John Mayfield and Todd Hagstette (forthcoming from
University of South Carolina Press, 2016).
“Abolitionism versus Proslavery Forces” in Conflict in American History: A Documentary
Encyclopedia, Volume 3: The Civil War Era, edited by Brain L. Johnson and Edwin J.
Blum, (New York: Facts on File Publishing, 2010).
Articles
“Codification in Virginia: Conway Robinson, John Mercer Patton and the Politics of Law
Reform,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography,117 (2009): 140-180.
“Reconsidering Suffrage Reform in the 1829-1830 Virginia Constitutional Convention,” Journal
of Southern History LXXIV (February 2008): 89-124.
“Partus Sequitur Ventrem: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Language of Republicanism in
Virginia’s House of Delegates, 1831-1832,” Australian Journal of Legal History, 6
(2000), 93-114.
Review Essays
“Questions of Distinctiveness: Comparative Patterns of National Development,” a review of
Enrico Del Lago, Agrarian Elites: American Slaveholders and Southern Italian
Landowners, 1815-1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005) for
Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 39,
No. 4, Fall 2006.
Book Reviews
Review of Watson W. Jennison, Cultivating Race: The Expansion of Slavery in Georgia, 17501860 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012) for the Georgia Historical
Quarterly, Fall 2014.
Review of Charles F. Hobson, St. George Tucker’s Law Reports and Selected Papers, 1782-1825,
Vols. 1-3, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013) for the Journal of
American History, March 2014.
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Review of Elizabeth D. Leonard, Lincoln’s Forgotten Ally: Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt
of Kentucky (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011) for The Annals of
Iowa.
Review of Douglas Bradburn, The Citizenship Revolution: Politics & the Creation of the
American Union, 1774-1804, (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2009) for
Journal of Southern History, February 2012.
Review of John Dinan, The Virginia State Constitution: A Reference Guide, Reference Guides to
the State Constitutions of the United States, Number 42, (Westport, Conn.: Praeger,
2006) for Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Summer 2007.
Review of John B. Boles, ed., Shapers of Southern History: Autobiographical Reflections
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004) for H-Net Reviews, published on H-South
and cross-posted, January 24, 2006.
Review of Michael A. Ross, Justice of Shattered Dreams: Samuel Freeman Miller and the
Supreme Court during the Civil War Era (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 2003) for The Annals of Iowa, Vol. 64, No.1, Winter 2005.
Review of Russell L. Johnson, Warriors into Workers: The Civil War and the Formation
of Urban-Industrial Society in a Northern City (New York: Fordham University Press,
2003) for Civil War History, Vol. 54, No. 4, December 2005.
Review of In Tender Consideration: Women, Families, and the Law in Abraham Lincoln’s
Illinois, edited by Daniel W. Stowell (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002) for the
Annals of Iowa, Vol. 63, No. 2, Spring 2004.
Review of Roots of Secession: Slavery and Antebellum Virginia by William A. Link (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2003) for the Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 24,
No. 1, Spring 2004.
Review of Repairing the “March of Mars”: The Civil War Diaries of John Samuel Apperson,
Hospital Steward in the Stonewall Brigade, 1861-1865. Edited by John Herbert Roper
(Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2001) for the Military History of the West,
Vol. 32, No. 2 Fall 2002.
Contributions
“Judge William Daniel (1806-1873),” in the Dictionary of Virginia Biography, volume 3,
Richmond: Library of Virginia, 2006, 693-696.
“Imprisonment for Debt,” in the Dictionary of American History (3d edition), New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons Reference Books.
In Progress
“The Right of Visitation in British Colonial Churches: Case Histories from Virginia, Jamaica,
New South Wales, and Cape Town” (under review).
A Question of Great Importance: Nullification, Slavery, and the Supreme Court (book
manuscript).
Rebuilding the Temple: Church Property Rights in the Disestablished South (book manuscript).
Fellowships
Faculty Fellow, Jonathan Jasper Wright Institute for the Study of African American History,
Culture, and Policy, Claflin University, 2007-2008
Jack Miller Center for Teaching America’s Founding Principles and History, Summer Institute,
Charlottesville, Virginia, July 2008
Visiting Fellow, Institute for Southern Studies, University of South Carolina, Fall 2006
Institute for Constitutional Studies 2005 Summer Seminar, “Slavery and the Constitution,”
George Washington University Law School, Washington, D.C., June 2005
Virginia Historical Society, Mellon Summer Research Fellowship, 2000, 2003, 2012
H. B. Earhart Foundation Fellowship, 1999-2000, 2000-2001
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Grants and Monetary Awards
Jack Miller Center Programming Award
Center for Excellence, Summer Research Grant, Claflin University, 2012
Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities, Iowa State, Summer Salary, 2005
Iowa State University, LAS Small Grants, 2003-2004, 2004-2005
Brown Southern Studies Award, 2001-2002
Frank Curtis Graduate Thesis Award, Virginia Tech, 1997
Dissertation
Jefferson’s Chosen People: Legal and Political Conceptions of the Freehold in the Old Dominion
from Revolution to Reform, 1775-1851. (Directed by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese)
M.E. Bradford Award for the Best Dissertation in Southern Studies (2003)
Conference Presentations
Papers Presented
Ecclesiastical Authority in the Anglican South: Challenges to Advowson Rights, presented at the
Conference on Religion and American Life, King’s College, London, February, 2013.
Tom Watson and the Populist Reconstruction of Jeffersonian Agrarianism, presented at The
Historical Society Conference, Columbia, SC, June, 2012.
Thomas Jefferson, the Republican Revisions, and the Modernization of the Common Law,
presented at the Jeffersonian Democracy in Theory and Practice roundtable, Princeton
University, May 18-19, 2012.
Church Property Rights in Disestablished Virginia, presented at the Australian-New Zealand
Legal History Conference, Brisbane, December 2011.
St. George Tucker and the Reception of the Common Law, presented at the American Society for
Legal History Conference, Atlanta, November 2011.
John Taylor of Caroline, George Tucker, and the Enclosure Movement in Virginia, presented at
the Forum on Agricultural, Rural, and Environmental History, Columbia, SC, April 2010.
The English Common Law and Private Ownership in Revolutionary Virginia, presented for the
British Group on Early American History, Manchester, England, September 2008.
“The Liberty Loving Men of Kent:” Historical Constructions of Private Ownership in
Revolutionary Virginia, presented at the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era,
Huntington, Alabama, February 2008.
“Red Republicanism” in Antebellum Virginia? The 1849 Inspector Controversy and the Politics
of Law Reform, presented at the Virginia Forum, Winchester, Virginia, April 2006.
British Influences on Dower Reform in Antebellum Virginia, presented at the Law’s Empire
Conference, Canadian Law and Society Meeting, British Columbia, June 2005.
Suffrage Reform in Virginia’s 1829-1830 Constitutional Convention, presented at the Midwest
Political Science Association Meeting, Chicago, April 2004.
Jefferson’s Vision Altered: Charles James Faulkner and the Legal Aspects of Agricultural Reform
in the Shenandoah Valley,” presented at the Shenandoah Valley Regional Studies
Seminar, James Madison University, March 2004.
Taking “Notice of an Error:” Historical Interpretations of Land Ownership in the Virginia
Commonwealth. Presented at the American Society for Legal History Meeting,
November 2003.
“America was not conquered by William the Norman:” Constructing a Law of Land Ownership
in the Virginia Commonwealth. Presented at the British and Irish Legal History
Conference. July 2003.
“A Question of Great Importance:” Nullification, Slavery, and the Marshall Court’s Decision in
Barron v. Baltimore (1833). Presented at the Law and Society Conference, June 2003.
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James P. Holcombe’s Sketches on the American Revolution: A Virginia Lawyer Examines the
Causes of Revolution on the Eve of the Civil War. Presented at the Douglas Southall
Freeman and Southern Intellectual History Conference, February 2002.
“Doubt . . . Seems to Have Arisen:” Grand Juror Qualifications and Interpretations of the
Freehold in Antebellum Virginia. Presented at the St. George Tucker Society Annual
Meeting, Vanderbilt University, August 2000.
Barron vs. The Mayor and City Council of Baltimore. Presented at the conference on People and
Places in Time: Baltimore’s Changing Landscapes, September 1999.
“Can these be the Sons of Their Fathers?” A New Look at the Debate on Slave Property in the
Virginia House of Delegates, December 1831 - January 1832. Presented at the SHEAR
Conference, Lexington, Kentucky, July 1999.
Partus Sequitur Ventrem: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Language of Republicanism in
Virginia’s House of Delegates, 1831-1832. Presented at the International Land and
Freedom Conference, Newcastle, Australia, July 1999.
Comments Delivered
Panel: “Religion and Culture: Transnational Perspectives” at the Georgia Association for
Historians Annual Meeting, February 2015.
Panel: “South Carolina Slavery from the Revolution to 1822,” at the South Carolina Historical
Association Annual Meeting, March 2011.
Panel: “Lacy Ford’s Deliver Us From Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South,” at the St.
George Tucker Society Meeting, July 2010.
Panel: “Catholics in the Countryside,” at the Agricultural History Society Meeting, June 2007.
Panel: “Political Philosophy and American Political Development,” at the Midwest Political
Science Association Meeting, April 2005.
Pete Daniel, “Defending the Chemical Treadmill: Law and Liability before Silent Spring,” at the
Atlanta Seminar in the Comparative History of Labor, Industry, Technology and Society
(SCHLITS), February, 2002.
Public Lectures
“Sherman and Savannah,” Lectures for The Learning Center, Senior Citizens Inc., OctoberNovember, 2015
Teaching
Teaching Experience
Professor of History, Armstrong State University, 2013- present
Associate Professor of History, Claflin University, 2011-2013
Assistant Professor of History, Claflin University, 2007-2011
Assistant Professor of History, Iowa State University, 2003-2007
Visiting Assistant Professor of History, University of West Georgia, 2002-2003
Teaching Awards
Nominee, Governor’s Teaching Award, Claflin University, 2010
SGA Pillar of Strength Award, Claflin University, 2008
Dean’s Teaching Fellowship, Emory University, 2001-2002
Distinguished Service Award (Students with Disabilities), West Georgia, 2001
Graduate Students
PhD. Students and dissertation topics
Rick Woten (Iowa State, 2009) Dissertation: “Navigating Internal Improvement: Rivers, Canals,
and State Formation in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest”
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MA Theses Supervised
Kevin Howe, “Patent Rights in Living Material: The Evolution of Intellectual Property
Rights in the Field of Biotechnology” (2007)
Rick Woten, “Navigating the era of internal improvements: The Des Moines River Improvement
Lands Grant” (2005)
Robert Welch, “Tenancy Considered: the Life of Henry C. Vanzant” (2006)
Tim Casady, “Dr. Jonathan Letterman and the Reform of Civil War Medical Practices (2006)
Graduate Seminars
Readings in America’s Civil War
Research in Nineteenth-Century America
Agrarian Reform Movements
Undergraduate Honor’s Thesis Directed
Donna Akuamoah, “The Formation of a Globalized Identity: A Case Study of Benazir Bhutto and
Ayaan Hirsi Ali” (Claflin, 2008)
Jalisa Barnes, “The Effects of the Vietnam War on the African American Family” (Claflin 2011)
Jasmine Benjamin, “Black Republican Congressmen and the Language of Race” (Claflin 2013)
Takiah Corbett, “A Comparative Study of the Religious Experiences of African Slaves in Cuba”
(Claflin, 2011)
Katie Gidlewski, “The Doctrine of Discovery: The Consequences of Jurisprudential Development
on Cherokee Removal” (Iowa State, 2007)
Select Undergraduate Course Titles
Creation of American Law
Slavery in the Americas
American Revolution
The Rural South
Slavery and the Sectional Crisis
Civil War and Reconstruction
Nineteenth-Century America
Historical Methods
South Carolina History
American Political Thought
Teaching/Mentoring Programs
UNCF/Mellon Undergraduate Fellow Mentor, Claflin University
Preparing Future Faculty Mentor, Iowa State
Additional Teaching Experience
Social Studies Teacher, William Campbell High School, Naruna, VA, 1993-1995
Life Science/Social Studies Teacher, William Campbell Middle School, Naruna, VA, 1992-1993
Administration and Service
Public Service
Governor’s Appointee, South Carolina Commission on Archives and History, 2011-2013
Administrative Positions
Head, Department of History, Armstrong State University, 2013- present
Chair, Department of History and Sociology, Claflin University, 2007 – 2013
Chair, Faculty Development Committee, Claflin University, 2011-2012
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Chair, Institutional Review Board, Claflin University, 2009 - 2011
Director of Graduate Education, MA Program, Iowa State 2003-2006
University Committees
Visionary Leadership Institute Planning Committee, Claflin University, 2011-2012
Faculty and Staff Advisory Council on Institutional Advancement, Claflin University, 2011-2012
Quality Enhancement Plan Implementation Committee, Claflin University, 2011-2012
Assessment Committee, Claflin University, 2010-2013
Quality Enhancement Plan Committee, Claflin University, 2009-2010
Faculty Development Committee, Claflin University, 2008 - 2010
SACS Steering Committee, Claflin University, 2007 – 2010
Curriculum Development/Program Initiatives
Visionary Leadership Institute, Claflin University, 2011
Panther STEPS, First Year Experience, Claflin University (implemented Fall 2011)
Social Sciences Research Initiative, Claflin University, (ongoing)
Politics and Justice Studies Degree Program, Claflin University (implemented Fall 2009)
Senior Capstone Research Experience, Claflin University (implemented Fall 2010)
Rural and Agricultural History Graduate Program Revisions, Iowa State, 2004
“Teaching Constitutional History,” Supreme Court Historical Society Workshop,
Washington, D.C., February, 2001
“Virtual Jamestown” Website Planning Conference, Blacksburg, Virginia, June, 1997
Community Service Events
Political Commentator, WIS TV, Columbia, SC
Election Night Coverage (November 2008)
Governor Sanford Affair Coverage (July 2009)
2012 Presidential Debates (October 2012)
Feature Article, “Mid-term Election Analysis,” Times and Democrat, October 1, 2010
Presentation to the Des Moines Civil War Roundtable, October 2004
Academic Service
Manuscript Reviews
Cambridge University Press
Louisiana State University Press
University of Nebraska Press
Anonymous Reader/Article Reviews
Article Reviews for Journal of Southern History, Annals of Iowa,
American Nineteenth Century History, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
Assessment Evaluations
Capstone Seminar Evaluator for Department of History, Virginia Tech (2006)
Professional Service
President, St. George Tucker Society
Membership Committee, Southern Historical Association, 2005-2006
Principal Academic Affiliations
American Historical Association, American Society for Legal History, Omohundro Institute for
Early American History and Culture, Southern Historical Association, Society for Historians of
the Early Republic, St. George Tucker Society, Virginia Historical Society, Supreme Court
Historical Society
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Professional Consulting
Expert Witness on Property Law for the law firms of Winston and Strawn, and Gammon and Gammon in
the case of The Episcopal Church v. Truro Church, et al. (2011)
Other Professional Experience
Secondary School Teacher, Campbell County (Virginia) Schools, 1992-1995
Infantry Officer, United States Marine Corps, 1986-1992

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