Robert Colby

Assistant Professor of History

• Faculty
• Instructor

• Email:

  rcolby@olemiss.edu

• Office Location:

  Bishop Hall

• Phone:

  662-915-7148

Dr. Robert Colby is an Assistant Professor of History in the Department of History at the University of Mississippi.

Research Interests

Dr. Robert Colby's current book project explores the survival of the domestic slave trade during the Civil War, using wartime slave commerce to examine the endurance of Confederate nationalism, economic and social life during the war, and the contested onset of African-American freedom. He has published in the Journal of the Civil War Era, Journal of the Early Republic, and Slavery and Abolition, as well as in an edited volume on reconciliation following Civil Wars.

Biography

Robert Colby is the recipient of the Society of American Historians' Allan Nevins Prize, of the Society of Civil War Historians' Anne J. Bailey Prize and Anthony Kaye Memorial Essay Award, and was a finalist for the Southern Historical Association's C. Vann Woodward Award. Before joining the University of Mississippi's History Department in 2022, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for American Studies at Christopher Newport University.

Publications

Articles:
“‘Negroes Will Bear Fabulous Prices’: The Economics of Wartime Slave Commerce and Visions of the Confederate Future,”  Journal of the Civil War Era, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Dec. 2020), 439-468. 

“‘Observant of the Laws of this Commonwealth”: A Free Black Family Between Forced Migration and Slave Capitalism,” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Sept. 2022). 

“What ‘The Books…Would Tell’: Slavery, Freedom, and History in Slave Traders’ Archives.” Slavery & Abolition, Vol. 43, No. 3, (Sept. 2022). 

“Lee Returns to the Capitol: A Case Study in Reconciliation and Its Limits,” in Paul Quigley and James Hawdon, eds., Reconciliation After Civil Wars: Global Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge, 2018). 

Courses Taught

• HST 130 Intro to US History to 1877
• HST 404 US- The Civil War Era, 1848-1877
• HST 422 The Rise and Fall of American Slavery
• HST 440 The Military History of the Civil War
• HST 490 Problems in History- America
• HST 494 Directed Readings in History
• HST 498 Undergrad Research Seminar in History
• HST 605 Readings - US through Reconstruction
• HST 611 Readings - Era of the US Civil War

• Office, Department or Center

  Department of History

• School

  College of Liberal Arts

• Campuses

  Oxford

• Areas of Expertise

  The Civil War era, with an emphasis on the lived experience of the conflict and on slavery and emancipation.