North Carolina Association of Historians Annual Meeting
28-29 March 2025
College of The Albemarle–Dare
205 Highway 64 South
Manteo, NC 27954
Friday, 28 March 2025
Continental Breakfast will be served in the Lobby from 8 to 8:30 A.M.
Opening Remarks
Dr. Anthony Johnson (President, NCAH) (8:15 – 8:30)
DARA-111-112
Session One (8:30 – 10:00)
Panel 1 – Native American in North Carolina
Chair: Eric Walls (Pitt Community College)
Dr. Arwin Smallwood – “A History Long Forgotten: The Early History of the Tuscarora of Eastern North Carolina 1500 to 1717” (NC Central University)
Payne Murray – “Cherokee Fish Hatchery” (Western Carolina University)
Location: DARA-206
Panel 2 – The United States in the Nineteenth Century
Chair: Dr. Carole Troxler (Elon University)
Dr. David Mitchell – “Up in Smoke: Smokehouses, Crime, and Newspapers in the Reconstruction-Era Piedmont” (Wingate University)
Claire Roth – “To Rend the Union into Fragments:’ The 1860 Association, Propaganda, and the Secession Crisis” (UNC-Chapel Hill).
Dr. Michael Kennedy – “Under Contract: Eighteenth-Century Labor Agreements” (High Point University)
Location: DARA-204
Session Two (10:30 – 12:00)
Panel 3 – Sundry Topics One
Chair: Dr. Glen Bowman (Elizabeth City State University)
Dr. Chris Laws – “Paltry Finances, Changing Demographics, and Contested Memory: Analyzing Early Confederate Commemoration in North Carolina, 1866-1898” (North Carolina State University).
Dr. Amy Swain – “The Bones in Our Backyard: Colonial Constructionism and the Hyper-local Histories of the Roanoke River Basin” (Independent Scholar)
Dr. Eric Oakley – “An ‘Essential Project’ – The American Founders and the Pacific Ocean” (East Carolina University)
Location: DARA-206
Panel 4 – The Chinese in America
Chair: Dr. David Mitchell (Wingate University)
Jack Zhu – “Great Debates on Federal Power and the Roles of the Three Branches:
Explaining Then Perspectives of Judicial Elites on Chinese Immigration from the Late
Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Centuries” (Wake Forest University).
Jiale Zhu – “Voices of Defiance: Chinese Coolie Testimonies and Acts of Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Cuban Plantations” (Wake Forest University).
Dr. Dorothea Hoffman – “Attacking the ‘Other’ in Times of Domestic Troubles (Appalachian State University).
Location: DARA-204
Lunch and Keynote Address: 12:15 – 1:45
Location: DARA-111-112
Speaker: Tama Creef (Outer Banks History Center)
“A Different Perspective on North Carolina History: Looking at the Past from the Inside-Out”
Session Three (2:00 – 3:30)
Panel 5 – Women’s History
Chair: Dr. Misti Harper (UNC-Pembroke)
Emilee Robbins – “Heroic Melancholy and Revolutionary Women: Constructing Gendered Literary Identities in Revolutionary Era Autobiography” (UNC – Greensboro).
Lisa Aft – “Southern Belles or Rebel Instigators: The Changing Role of Southern Women as Seen Through Political Cartoons, 1861-1866” (UNC – Greensboro).
Samantha Dunn – Jacqueline Félicie de Almania and Women in Medieval Medicine (High Point University)
Location: DARA-206
Panel 6 – Roundtable Discussion
Chair: Dr. Amanda Laury Kleintop, Assistant Professor of History, Elon University
“The Alamance County History Harvest: Public History in Action through Community Engagement and Experiential Learning”
Participants: Emily Moser, Master’s of Higher Education Student; Kelly Policelli, Coordinator of University Archives & Special Collections and Assistant Librarian; Matthew Brantley, Undergraduate Student; Kayden Poteat, Undergraduate Student (Elon University)
Location: DARA-207
Session Four (3:45 – 5:15)
Panel 7 – Western North Carolina Topics
Chair: Dr. Dorothea Hoffman (Appalachian State University)
Chelsea Freeland – “Post-hurricane Historic Landscape Data Collection in Western North Carolina” (East Carolina University).
Dr. Carole Troxler – “Reconstruction Era Origins of ‘The Ballpark Community’ in Elon, North Carolina” (Elon University).
Zoey Hanson – “Dispossessed and Displaced: Land, Identity and Memory in Former Blue Ridge Parkway Communities” (UNC – Greensboro).
Location: DARA-206
Panel 8 – Topics in Ancient History
Chair: Dr. Jason Raupp (East Carolina University)
James Phillips – “To Mold the Roman People to Virtue: Plutarch’s Life of Cato the Censor and the Emergence of the Roman Moral Imagination” (East Carolina University)
Mack Oakley – Queens of the Nile: Exploring the Power of Cleopatra VII, Hatshepsut, and Nefertiti (High Point University)
Dr. Patrick Kent – “Where are the Cranite Mountains?: History and Memory in Ancient Sources” (Martin Community College)
Location: DARA-207
Closing Ceremony for 28 March, DARA 111-112 (5:15-5:30)
NCAH Business Meeting, DARA 111-112 (5:30-6:00)
Shared Dinner at Lone Cedar Cafe
7:00 pm
7623 S Virginia Dare Trail, Nags Head, NC 27959
Saturday, 29 March 2025
Continental Breakfast will be served in the Lobby from 8 to 8:30 A.M.
Greetings from Dr. Anthony Johnson (President, NCAH) (8:15 – 8:30).
Location: DARA-111
Session One (8:30 – 10:00)
Panel 9 – Biographical Sketches
Chair: Brian Edwards (College of the Albemarle)
Dr. Alan Lamm – “Historian of the Faith: The Life & Legacy Michael R. Pelt, Ph.D.” (Mount Olive University).
Dr. Robert Smith – “Challenges to Flag Officer Lynch’s Command of the C.S.N. in North Carolina beyond the U.S.N.” (Mid-Atlantic Christian University).
Heribert von Feilitzsch – “Playing all Sides to the Middle: Gaston Bullock Means, Detective, Federal Agent, and Conman” (UNC – Greensboro).
Location: DARA-206
Panel 10 – North Carolina Miscellany
Chair: Dr. Boyd Harris (College of the Albemarle)
Mick Anderson – “Mobilizing Student Activist Archives: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1970 & 2024” (UNC – Chapel Hill).
Ethan Whiten – “The Historical & Archaeological Potential of the Wadboo Barony (East Carolina University).
Location: DARA-207
Panel 11 – American Voyages in the Lawless Pacific, 1802-1811
Chair: Dr. Eric Oakley (East Carolina University)
Addison Costa – “Changing Tides: Profit and Profiteering in the Pacific” (East Carolina University).
Kelly Welton – “Desertion, Disease, and Disrepair: A Long Voyage in a War-Torn Ocean” (East Carolina University).
James Fowler – “Trade and Treachery aboard the Otter: American Mariners in the Pacific” (East Carolina University)
Location: DARA-204
Session Two (10:30 – 12:00)
Panel 12 – “Strategies of Two Black Educational Leaders in the Tar Heel State during the Age of Jim Crow”
Chair: Dr. Will Guzman (NC Central University)
Dr. David H. Jackson, Jr. – “Booker T. Washington in the Coastal Plain Region of North Carolina, October – November 1910.” (NC Central University).
Dr. Reginald Ellis – “James Edward Shepard and the Politics of Black Higher Education, 1933-1947” (Florida A&M University).
Location: DARA-206
Panel 13 – International Topics
Chair: Anthony Johnson (UNC – Pembroke)
Nicholas Locy – “Personal Project of the Influential : The Austro-Hungarian Navy 1848-1914” (East Carolina University).
Colt Marion – “Violent Tendencies: The Franciscan Order and the Mexican Inquisition” (High Point University)
Kayla Wylie – “In Defense of the Papacy: Rethinking the Catholic Response to the Protestant Reformation” (High Point University)
Location: DARA-207
Panel 14 – Sundry Topics Two
Chair: Dr. Alan Lamm (Mount Olive University)
Dr. Clark Summers – “An Exploration of the NC National Guard and the 1929 Loray Mill Strike” (Belmont Abbey College).
Dr. Glen Bowman – “Building Community, Ensuring Institutional Survival: Elizabeth City State Football, 1912-1957” (Elizabeth City State University).
Rachel Beth Acker – “Cowboys and Iranians: The Role of Racialized and Gendered Narratives in the 1953 Iranian Coup D’état” (NC State University).
Location: DARA-204
Closing Remarks
Dr. Anthony Johnson (President, NCAH) (12:00-12:15)
DARA-111