CHRISTOPHER CHARLES MORRIS

Associate Professor

 

Address:      Department of History
                     Box 19529
                     University of Texas at Arlington
                     Arlington, Texas 76019-0529

Telephone:  (817) 272-2906

E-Mail:        morris@uta.edu

Fax:             817-272-2852

Educational Background

                  Ph.D., 1991, University of Florida.
              M.A., 1985, University of Western Ontario, Canada
              B.A., 1981, University of Western Ontario, Canada

COURSES TAUGHT

Undergraduate:

                  History of the United States to 1865
             History of the United States 1865 to Present
             New Nation, 1789 to 1848
             Early Frontier, 1539 to 1848
             Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction
                 Transformation of American Culture, 1830 to 1900
             Old South, to 1863
             New South, since 1863
             Business and Economic History of the U.S., 1607-1865
             Approaches to the Study of History
             Environmental History of the U.S.
             Honors research colloquium

Graduate:

                  Race, Gender and Class in the Nineteenth-Century U.S.
             The Old South
             Transformation of American Culture, 1789-1914
             The "New Cultural History" of the United States
             History Theory and Methods

     Graduate Committees:

                  M.A.: 2 in progress (chair for 2); 8 completed (chair for 1)
              PhD.: 5 in progress (chair for 1); 2 completed

PUBLICATIONS

Books:  

A Big Muddy River Runs Through It: 
                An  Environmental History of the Lower Mississippi Valley from Hernando de Soto to Hurricane Katrina 
                (forthcoming from Oxford University Press, 2008).

                  Becoming Southern: The Evolution of a Way of Life,Vicksburg and Warren County, Mississippi 1770-1860
                          (New  York: Oxford University Press, 1995; paperback edition, 1999. xix, 258   pages).            
                           A History Book Club main selection; nominated for the  Pulitzer Prize

                  Manifest Destiny and Empire: American Antebellum Expansion
                         (College  Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1997),
                         co-edited with Sam W. Haynes

                  Southern Writers and Their Worlds
                         (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1996;
                           paperback edition, Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press, 1998),
                           co-edited with Steven G. Reinhardt

      Essays:  

                  “How to Prepare Buffalo, and Other Things French Taught Indians about Nature,”
                         in Bradley G. Bond, ed. French ColonialLouisiana and the Atlantic World 
                        (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), 22-42.

                  AHow to Prepare Buffalo, and Other Things French Taught Indians about Nature,@
                        in Bradley G. Bond, ed. Colonial Louisiana: A Tricentennial Symposium
                       (Louisiana State University Press, forthcoming, accepted June 1999).

                  AImpenetrable but Easy: The French Transformation of the Lower  Mississippi Valley
                   and the Founding of New Orleans,@
                              in Craig E.  Colten, ed. Centuries of Change: Human Transformation of the Lower Mississippi
                               Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000), 22-42.

                  "Within Slave Households: Domestic Violence among  Mississippi Slaves,"
                           in Christine Daniels, ed., Over the Threshold: Intimate Violence in Early America, 1640-1865
                           (New York: Routledge,  1999).

                  "What's So Funny?: Southern Humorists and the Market  Revolution,"
                           in Christopher Morris and Steven G.  Reinhardt, eds. Southern Writers and Their Worlds
                           (College  Station: Texas A&M Press, 1996;
                             paperback edition, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998), 9-26.

Journal Articles:  

“Finding Louisiana: La Salle and the Mississippi River Delta,” Terrae Incognitae 36 
                            (2004), 28-41.

                  AShopping for America in Mississippi: Or, How I Learned to Stop Complaining and Love the Pemberton Mall,@
                            Reviews in American History   29 (March 2001), 103-110.

        AThe Articulation of Two Worlds: The Master-Slave Relationship  Reconsidered,@
                            Journal of American History 85 (December 1998), 982-1007.

                  "Challenging the Masters: Recent Studies on Slavery and Freedom,"
                            Florida Historical Quarterly 73 (October 1994), 218-224.

                  "Reading Popular Culture in Early America"
                            Reviews in American History 22 (June 1994), 252-57.

                  "The Southern White Community in Life and Mind,"
                           Canadian Review of American Studies 21 (Fall 1990), 203-222.

                  "An Event in Community Organization: The Mississippi Slave Insurrection Scare of 1835,"
                           Journal of Social History 22 (Fall 1988), 93-111.

CURRENT RESEARCH

PROJECTS       

                 "People and Environment in the Mississippi Valley," a book-length survey of the ecological history of the Mississippi Valley from early Native  Americans through the Army Corps of Engineers.

                 AThe Strange Career of Gideon Gibson.@ A book-length project about a  southern family that over several generations moved from black to white.

                 "Community, Section and Nation: The Organization of  American Society and the Conceptualization of the Union, 1830-1861." This is a book-length project on the cross-sectional associations and experiences of antebellum Americans and the ways those experiences shaped and were shaped by notions of community, section and nation.