11/5/2018
EDWARD J. BLUM
Department of History
San Diego Stage University
5500 Campanile Dr.
San Diego, CA 92182-6050
(619) 594-8462
EMPLOYMENT
2009 -Associate Professor of History, San Diego State University
2007-2009Assistant Professor of History, San Diego State University
2006-2007Assistant Professor of History, Kean University
2005Associate Editor, Kentucky Historical Society
2003-2004Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Sociology, Baylor University
EDUCATION
2003Ph.D.,History, University of Kentucky
Dissertation: “Gilded Crosses: Race, Religion, and the Reforging of American Nationalism, 1865-1898”
Winner, C. Vann Woodward Dissertation Prize from the Southern Historical Association
2001M.A., History, University of Kentucky
1999B.A., History, University of Michigan
Honors, Department of History
PUBLICATIONS
Monographs
The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America, co-authored with Paul Harvey (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming 2012).
W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet (University of Pennsylvania Press, cloth 2007; paperback, 2009).
Awards:
- Finalist, Grawemeyer Award in Religion, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the University of Louisville (1 of 3 finalists).
- Honorable Mention, Gustavus Myers Book Award
Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898 (Louisiana State University Press, cloth 2005; paperback 2007).
Awards:
- Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities, The Council of Graduate Schools (2009)
- Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship, given by the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War, Shepherd University (2006)
- Honorable Mention, Gustavus Myers Book Award (2005)
Edited Volumes
The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History, edited with Paul Harvey (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).
Major Problems in American History, Volumes 1 and 2 (Third Editions), edited with Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman and Jon Gjerde (Boston: Cengage 2011).
The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois: New Essays and Reflections, edited with Jason R. Young (Mercer University Press, cloth 2009).
Vale of Tears: New Essays in Religion and Reconstruction, edited with W. Scott Poole (Mercer University Press, cloth, 2005; paperback 2005).
Journal Articles
“‘Look, Baby, We Got Jesus on Our Flag’: Robust Democracy and Religious Debate from the Era of Slavery to the Age of Obama,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, special edition on “Race, Religion, and Late Democracy,” 637 (September 2011): 17-37.
Forum, “American Religion and ‘Whiteness.’” Religion and American Culture 19, no. 1 (Spring 2009): 1-10.
“The Contact of Living Souls: Interracial Friendship, Faith, and African American Memories of Slavery and Freedom,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism 3, no. 1 (2009): 89-110.
“God’s Imperialism: Mark Twain and the Religious Battle Between Imperialists and Anti-Imperialists,” Mark Twain Studies 2 (October 2006): 35-38. Reprinted in the Journal of Transnational American Studies
“‘There Won’t Be Any Rich People in Heaven:’ Black Christs, White Hypocrites, and the Gospel According to W. E. B. Du Bois,” The Journal of African American History 90, no. 4 (Fall 2005): 368-386.
“The Soul of W. E. B. Du Bois,” Philosophia Africana 7, no. 2 (August 2004): 1-15 (special edition commemorating the centennial of The Souls of Black Folk).
“‘Paul Has Been Forgotten’: Women, Gender, and Revivalism during the Gilded Age,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 3, no. 3 (July 2004): 247-270.
“The Crucible of Disease: Trauma, Memory, and National Reconciliation during the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878,” The Journal of Southern History 69, no. 4 (November 2003): 791-820.
“‘Beginning a New War’: Religion, Race, and Reunion after Lincoln’s Assassination,” Mid-America: An Historical Review 84, nos. 1-3 (Winter/Summer/Fall 2002): 27-54.
“Gilded Crosses: Postbellum Revivalism and the Reforging of American Nationalism,” Journal of Presbyterian History 79, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 277-292.
Book Chapters
“‘I Have Seen Miracles in My Life’: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Religious Limits of Secularism,” in Vincent W. Lloyd and Elliot Ratzman, eds., Secular Faith (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010): 102-125.
“A Subversive Savior: Manhood and African American Images of Christ in the Early Twentieth-Century South,” in Craig T. Friend, ed., Southern Masculinity: Perspectives on Manhood in the South since Reconstruction (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009): 150-173.
“Lynching as Crucifixion: Violence and the Sacred Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois,” in Edward J. Blum and Jason R. Young, eds., The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois: New Essays and Reflections (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009): 188-208.
“God of Wrath, God of Peace: Popular Religion, Popular Press, and the Meaning of the Civil War during Reconstruction,” in David Sachsman, ed., Words at War: The Civil War and American Journalism (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2008).
“Of Saints and Sinners: Religion and the Civil War and Reconstruction Novel,” in David Sachsman, ed., Myth and Memory: The Civil War in Fiction and Film from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Cold Mountain (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2007): 127-136.
Michael O. Emerson and Edward J. Blum, “Dreams,” in Michael O. Emerson People of the Dream: Multiracial Congregations in the United States (Princeton University Press, 2006), 5-27.
“‘O God of a Godless Land’: Northern African American Challenges to White Christian Nationhood, 1865-1906,” in Vale of Tears: New Essays in Religion and Reconstruction, eds. Edward J. Blum and W. Scott Poole (Mercer University Press, 2005), 93-111.
Op-Ed Essays and National Interviews
Editorial, “Obama’s Nod to the Black Church,” Washington Post online, April 6, 2010.
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Editorial, “Sympathy, Frustration and Reform: A Response to Eddie Glaude’s The Black Church is Dead,” Religion Dispatches, March 10, 2010.
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Television Interview, “The Election of Barack Obama,” Fox San Diego, November 6, 2008. 6:10 am
Editorial, “Neither Christ, Nor Antichrist: A Reflection on the Election of Barack Obama,” Religion Dispatches, November 6, 2008. <
Radio Interview, “Where Does America Go From Here?” on These Days with Tom Fudge, November 5, 2008. <
Radio Interview, “Pentecostalism and Politics” on These Days with Tom Fudge, September 18, 2008. <
Author Interview, “Religion Dispatches Ten Questions,” Religion Dispatches, June 19, 2008. <
Feature Interview with Jamie Reno, “Prophets and Politicians: Why Reverend Wright Said What He Did,” Newsweek, March 19, 2008. <
Editorial, “God Damn America in Black and White,” History News Network, March 17, 2008. <
Editorial, “What Barack Obama (and the Democratic Party) Can Learn About Religion from W. E. B. Du Bois,” History News Network, July 16, 2007. <
Radio Interview, “The Soul of W. E. B. Du Bois,” Black History Month with WMBI Chicago (aired in February 2004)
Book Reviews and Essays
“An American Original: Review of Paul C. Gutjahr’s The Book of Mormon: A Biography,” in Christian Century, 129, no. 17 (August 22, 2012): 38-39.
“Spiritualized Warfare: Review of George C. Rable’s God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War and Sean A. Scott’s A Visitation of God: Northern Civilians Interpret the Civil War,” in Christian Century, 128, no. 3 (November 15, 2011): 36-37.
Kevin Schultz, Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held America to its Protestant Promise, at Religion Dispatches, August 31, 2011.
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“Review of Nell Irvin Painter’s The History of White People,” in Christian Century (December 28, 2010): 36-37.
Robert J. Norrell, Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington, in the Journal of Religion 90 (April 2010): 257-258.
“Review of Barbara Dianne Savage’s Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion,” in Christian Century, 126, no. 13 (June 30, 2009): 35-37.
Response to Panel Review of W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet, in Journal of Southern Religion, Volume 11 (2009).
“Racial Distrust in America: Review of John L. Jackson’s Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness,” in National Catholic Reporter (September 19, 2008): 21 and 23.
“Review of Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War,” in Christian Century, 125 no. 13 (July 1, 2008): 40-41.
Orville Vernon Burton, The Age of Lincoln, in the Journal of American History (March 2008), 1263-1264.
“Still Bloody, Still Tragic: The History of Reconstruction,” comparative review of Stephen Budiansky’s The Bloody Shirt: Terror after Appomattox and Michael W. Fitzgerald’s Splendid Failure: Postwar Reconstruction in the American South, in H-CivWar (June 2008). Reprinted at The History News Network <hnn.com>
Charles W. Calhoun, Conceiving a New Republic: The Republican Party and the Southern Question, 1869-1900, in the Journal of Southern History (February 2008), 206-207.
“After the Lynch Mob: A Review of Dora Apel and Shawn Michelle Smith, Lynching Photographs,” New York Sun (January 30, 2008), pg. 16.
“Marcus Garvey’s Operation Dixie: A Review Essay of Mary G. Rolinson’s Grassroots Garveyism: The Universal Negro Improvement Association in the Rural South, 1920-1927,” in Reviews in American History, September 2007, 419-424.
Panel Review, Colin Kidd, The Forging of the Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600-2000 (Cambridge University Press) in Journal of Southern Religion, volume 10 (2007).
“Lincoln’s New Men: A Review Essay of Kenneth L. Deutsch and Joseph R. Fornieri, eds., Lincoln’s American Dream: Clashing Political Perspectives ,” in The Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Society 28, no. 2 (Summer 2007): 90-93.
Edward J. Robinson, To Save My Race from Abuse: The Life of Samuel Robert Cassius, in the American Historical Review (December 2007), 1546-1547.
Michele Mitchell, Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction, in H-South, H-Net Reviews, April 2006 (online review).
Response to Fitzhugh Brundage, feature review of Reforging the White Republic, in the Journal of Southern Religion Vol. 8 (2005).
“Grapes of Wrath: A Review Essay of Harry S. Stout’s Upon the Altar of The Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War,” in Books & Culture (March/April 2005): 15, 18.
James B. Bennett, Religion and the Rise of Jim Crow in New Orleans, in The Journal of Southern Religion, October 2005 (online review).
Paul Harvey, Freedom’s Coming: Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era, in H-South, H-Net Reviews, May 2005 (online review).
C. A. Tripp, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, in H-CivWar, H-Net Reviews, May 2005 (online review).
David Williams, Teresa Crisp Williams, and David Carlson, Plain Folk in a Rich Man’s War: Class and Dissent in Confederate Georgia, in H-South, H-Net Reviews, June 2004 (online review).
John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race, in H-CivWar, H-Net Reviews, May 2003 (online review).
Jason Bivins, The Fracture of Good Order: Christian Antiliberalism and the Challenge to American Politics, in The Journal of Southern History.
HONORS AND AWARDS
2012Favorite Faculty Award
Residential Education, San Diego State University
2011-2012Fulbright Fellowship
Senior Professor, United States History, Free University of Berlin, Germany
(awarded, but declined due to family illness)
2011Outstanding Faculty Member
History Department, San Diego State University
2010Favorite Faculty Award
Residential Education, San Diego State University
Fellow, Calvin Seminars in Christian Scholarship
“Religion, War, and the Meaning of America” led by Professor Harry Stout
CalvinSeminars in Christian Scholarship
2009Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities for Reforging the White Republic
Prize for best first book by a historian published from 2001 to 2008
Council of Graduate Schools, Washington, D.C.
2007-2009Fellow, Young Scholars in American Religion Program
Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, IUPUI
2009Most Outstanding Professorof History Department
San Diego State University
2008Finalist, Grawemeyer Award in Religion for W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet
Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the University of Louisville (1 of 3 finalists).
Fellow, Institute for Constitutional Studies
“The Influence of Religion on Constitutional Thought” led by Professor Mark Noll
George Washington University
2007Honorable Mention, Gustavus Myers Book Award
W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet
Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights
Award, Top Young Historian
History News Network
George Mason University < May 21, 2007.
2006Fellow, Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Humanities
“African American Civil Rights Struggles in the Twentieth Century”
Harvard University
Winner, Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship, Shepherd University
Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898
George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War
$11,000 Grant, Students Partnering with Faculty Summer Research Program
“‘They Lynched Christ’: Race and Religion in the Early Black Freedom Struggle”
Kean University
2005Honorable Mention, Gustavus Myers Book Award
Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism
Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights
2004Winner, C. Vann Woodward Dissertation Prize
“Gilded Crosses: Race, Religion, and the Reforging of American Nationalism, 1865-1898”
Kean University
Winner, Best Paper Prize for United States History
“For God, and Home, and Native Land”: Religion, Nationalism, and White Supremacy in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union”
Southwestern Historical Association
2003Fellowship, University of Kentucky Association of Emeriti Faculty
2002Winner, Provost’s Award for Teaching
University of Kentucky
Fellow,Pew Younger Scholars
University of Notre Dame
PRESENTATIONS
Keynote Addresses, Invited Guest Lectures, and Book Talks
“The Holy Face of Race: The Whiteness of Christ and Major Shifts in American Culture,” Humanities Collective, University of California, Irvine, January 17, 2012.
Keynote Address, “‘To Doubt This Would be to Doubt God’: Providential Problems and Millennial Musings in America’s Religious Reconstruction,” Conference on Millennialism and Providentialism in the Era of the American Civil War, Rice University, October 2, 2010.
“Christ, Color, and Comedy: How the Lord became a Laughingstock in Modern America,” African American Forum, Rice University, September 30, 2010.
“When Heaven and Earth Collide: How Religion Explodes the Worlds of Everyday Americans,” Panel Discussion, “Re-Imagining American Religions: A Conversation on New World Cultures through the 21st Century,” Department of Religious Studies, University of California, Riverside, March 5, 2010.
“Jesus in Red, White, and Black,” Loyola Marymount University, February 25, 2010.
“Yellow Fever, 1878: How Disease Healed an Ailing Nation,” at the Free University of Berlin, Germany, sponsored by the Department of History at the John F. Kennedy Institute, June 18, 2009.
“‘His Soul on Fire’: Finding the Soul in W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk,” W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures – Du Bois Distinguished Lecturers,” at Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, sponsored by the Department of American Studies, June 16, 2009.
“Abraham Lincoln’s Last Days: Hero, Martyr, and Civil Rights Inspiration,” for traveling exhibit Abraham Lincoln: A Man of His Time, a Man for All Times sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the National Endowment for the Humanities, San Diego Public Library, April 11, 2009.
“Finding God in Questions of Racism, Violence, and War: The Sacred Questions and Answers of W. E. B. Du Bois,” Princeton University, October 23, 2008.
“The Noose and the Cross: Race, Religion, and the Redemption of Violence in the Works of W. E. B. Du Bois,” University of Houston, April 3, 2008.
“‘Come on God, Get Up and Fight’: How Upton Sinclair, Langston Hughes, and W. E. B. Du Bois Tried to Save Jesus,” University of California, Riverside, February 26, 2008.
“In Search of the Father’s Village: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Spirituality of the Struggle,” Dr. Robert Michael Franklin’s presidential symposium on Culture, Spiritual Values, and the Pursuit of Excellence in Higher Education, Morehouse College, February 14, 2008.
Symposium on W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet, History Department and African American Studies, Emory University, February 13, 2008.
“They Lynched Christ, Too: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Redemption of America’s Violent Past,” The Institute for the Study of Religion, Violence, and Memory, The University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, February 7, 2008.
“‘Help For God’s Sake!’ Race and Religion in the United States,” Center for Race, Religion, and Urban Life (CORRUL), Rice University, November 9, 2007.
“The Religious Life and Times of W. E. B. Du Bois,” Race and Religion Workshop, The University of Chicago, October 2, 2007.
“‘I Wonder Where Christ’s Gone?’ How Langston Hughes and W. E. B. Du Bois Tried to Save Jesus,” Religious Cultures of the African Diaspora: New Trajectories of Inquiry, Rochester University, September 20, 2007.
“The Color of the Cross: Jesus Christ in Black America,” panel discussion, Harvard Divinity School, April 23, 2007.
“Reforging the White Republic: New Perspectives on American Nationalism,” Shepherd University, September 14, 2006.
“Reconstruction and Reunion in Pictures,” Filson Historical Society, August 25, 2006.
“Religion and W. E. B. Du Bois’s Pan-African Imagination,” invited public lecture with the Carolina Lowcountry & Atlantic World Seminar Series at the College of Charleston, January 30, 2004.
“‘Surely Thou… art not white, O Lord’: African American Challenges to White Christian Nationhood, 1865-1906,” invited public lecture at the Harvard Divinity School, Boston, Massachusetts, December 5, 2002.
“Patience with God: Religious Belief in the Mind, Life, and Times of W. E. B. Du Bois,” invited public lecture at the Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, Illinois, December 3, 2003.
Selected Conference Papers
“Satan and Secession: Evil and the Crisis of the Union,” American Historical Association, January 7, 2012.
“Give the Devil His Due: National Division and Concepts of Evil in the Civil War Era,” American Historical Association, January 8, 2010.
“From National Loyalty to Racial Supremacy: Imagined Communities in Reconstruction Political Cartoons and Utopian Fiction,” symposium on Reconstruction, Representation, and the Rule of the ‘Democratic Game’ at the Free University of Berlin, June 19, 2009.
“The Religious Life and Times of W. E. B. Du Bois,” American Historical Association, January 3, 2008.
Panelist, War and Religion in North America, American Academy of Religion, November 19, 2007.
“‘The Contact of Living Souls’: Remembering Reconstruction’s Northern White Teachers During the Age of Jim Crow,” Southern Historical Association, November 3, 2007
Panelist, Teaching About Race in the Post-Civil Rights Era, American Studies Association, October 13, 2007.
“The White Republic Triumphant: Whiteness, Utopianism, and Imagination in the Gilded Age,” Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Washington, DC, January 5, 2007.
“‘Jesus was a Black Man’: Images of Christ among African American Men, 1900-1966,” Christ in Contemporary Cultures: A Cultural Studies Conference, Gordon College, Boston, September 29, 2006.
“‘No North, No South, No Sectionalism in Politics, No Sex in Citizenship’: National Reconciliation and White Supremacy in the Making of the Women's Christian Temperance Union,”paper delivered at the Southern Historical Association, Memphis, Tennessee, November 5, 2004.
“‘Hear Us Good Lord’: Religion and the Sociological Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois,” paper delivered at the Southern Sociological Association, Atlanta, Georgia, April 16, 2004.