James R. Chumney

Associate Professor Emeritus

Office: 318 Mitchell
Telephone: 901.678.2518
Fax: 901.678.2720
E-mail: jchumney@memphis.edu
Education: University of Memphis, B.S.; Trinity University, M.A.; Rice University, Ph.D. 1964

Fields of Interest

Southern American History—Old South, New South; Civil War & Reconstruction; and U S Military & Naval History are my specialties.

My dissertation at Rice University was Don Carlos Buell, Gentleman General, a Union general in the Civil War.

Experience as an active duty and Naval Reserve LCDR intelligence officer helps to enrich my military and naval history course.

As University Historian appointed by President C. C. Humphreys I am presently working to complete the official history of the University of Memphis.

I have reviewed books for the Journal of Southern History and written appraisals of articles submitted to it for publication as well as serving as a reader of manuscripts for two presses. I regularly write reviews and some articles in my fields of Southern History and Civil War History.

Editor of the West Tennessee Historical Society’s Papers for five years.

Courses taught

Regularly I teach graduate level courses in Southern History (7000/8000) and graduate/undergraduate (4000/6000) courses in Civil War and Reconstruction. Beginning in the Spring of 2002 I developed a new approach for my 7980/8980 Thematic Studies — the American Civil War. It is based on the website and CD-ROM documents presented in Valley of the Shadow, Two Communities in the American Civil War. This “electronic” archives of everyday life of two communities affords students an opportunity to explore an easily accessible collection of primary sources.

Representative publications

• The Encyclopedia of Southern History, LSU Press: “Battle of Shiloh”, “Braxton Bragg”, “James C. McReynolds”, “Edward T. Sanford”, “Edward W. Carmack”, and “Malcolm R. Patterson.”
• A Historical Dictionary of Civil Rights in the United States: “Rev. James M. Lawson, Jr.”
• Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery, Greenwood Press: “Slavery in Memphis.”
• Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture: “University of Memphis.”
• West Tennessee Historical Society Papers: “West Tennessee College Teacher.”
• Tennessee Historical Quarterly: “The Pink Palace: Clarence Saunders and the Memphis Museum.”

• Frank H. Heck’s Proud Kentuckian, John C. Breckinridge, 1821-1875 in Tennessee Historical Quarterly.
• Pete Daniel’s Deep’n as It Come: The 1927 Mississippi River Flood in Journal of Southern History.
• Clement Eaton’s Jefferson Davis in West Tennessee Historical Society Papers.
• J.V. Ridgely’s Nineteenth-Century Southern Literature in The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society.
• James Lee McDonough’s Stones River: Bloody Winter in Tennessee in The Annals of Iowa.
• Lawrence L. Hewitt’s Port Hudson, Confederate Bastion on the Mississippi in Military History of the Southwest.
• Jerry O. Potter’s The Sultana Tragedy: America’s Greatest Maritime Disaster in The Journal of Southern History.
• James D. Brewer’s The Raiders of 1862 in The Journal of Southern History.