Joseph Crespino

Joseph Crespino (born January 10, 1972) is a political historian of the 20th Century United States, specializing in the history of the American South and of modern conservatism. He is the author of two books and an edited collection and has been named a Top Young Historian[1] by the History News Network at George Mason University.

Personal History

Crespino was raised in Macon, Mississippi. His father, Bobby Crespino, played football at the University of Mississippi and then later in the NFL. Crespino attended The McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, from 1986 to 1990, and Northwestern University (1990–1994). From 1994 to 1996, he was a member of the Mississippi Teacher Corps, where he taught 11th-grade American history at Gentry High School in Indianola, Mississippi.

He earned his doctorate in American history from Stanford University in 2002 and is currently an associate professor of history at Emory University in Atlanta. He received the Undergraduate Teaching Award from the Emory Center for Teaching and Curricular Excellence in 2009.[2] His wife is Mississippi-born singer-songwriter Caroline Herring.

Works

Crespino is the author of Strom Thurmond’s America (Hill and Wang, 2012), a political biography of the longtime U.S. Senator from South Carolina. Pulitzer Prize winner Doris Kearns Goodwin describes it as a “thoroughly terrific and important work” that “makes clear the continuing impact of Thurmond’s legacy on our politics today.” Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, calling in “an impressive biography . . . Crespino’s portrait reveals a flawed, egotistical, unapologetic, headstrong man whose views helped give birth to the contemporary Right and whose legacy continues to influence the GOP.”

His other book, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton, 2007), won the 2008 Lillian Smith Book Award by the Southern Regional Council, the McLemore Prize for the Best Mississippi History Book, and the nonfiction prize given by the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. He also co-edited with Matthew Lassiter a book of essays titled The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism (Oxford, 2010).

References

  1. ↑ History News Network. "History News Network".
  2. ↑ Emory University. "Joseph Crespino".