Profile image of John Giggie standing outside with a blue blazer and white shirt.

John M. Giggie

Associate Professor
Director, Summersell Center for the Study of the South

Education

  • PhD, Princeton University, 1998

Research Areas

  • Southern History
  • Religious History
  • United States History
  • History of Race

About

Research Interests

  • Southern History
  • Civil Rights
  • African-American History
  • American Religion

Current Projects

  • Civil Rights and the Modern South
  • History of Lynching
  • African American Religion and the Civil War

Courses Taught

  • American Civilization since 1865 (HY 204)
  • Religion and the Civil Rights Movement
  • Alabama Memory: Lynching in Alabama
  • The Modern Civil Rights Movement
  • Queer History South

Awards and Honors

Teaching Fellowships and Honors
  • Graduate Fellowship Grant, Center for Community-Based Partnerships, The University of Alabama, April 2019
  • Distinguished Fellow in Teaching, The University of Alabama, 2013- 2016
  • Excellence in Community Engagement, Center for Community-Based Partnerships, The University of Alabama, April 2013
  • Fellow, Center for the Study of Ethics and Social Responsibility, The University of Alabama, 2011-12
  • Instructional Grant, Active and Collaborative Learning Program, The University of Alabama, Fall 2008, April 2010
  • Honors Alliance Award for Outstanding Teaching, University of Texas at San Antonio, Spring 2007
  • Certificate of Merit, Northwest Vista Community College, San Antonio, Texas, November 2006 (for furthering the study of African American history)
  • San Antonio’s Best Teachers, A. Magazine, August 2006
  • Presidential Distinguished Achievement Award, University of Texas at San Antonio, Spring 2006
Research Grants and Prizes (Recent and Selected)
  • Summer Teaching Grant. College of Arts and Sciences, The University of Alabama, Summer 2019
  • Center for Community-Based Partnerships, Graduate Fellowship Award, The University of Alabama, April 2019. [Grant: “History of Us: Teaching the History of Lynching in High Schools.” Award is to develop a new secondary education curriculum that integrates the history of racial violence with the telling of southern history at Central High School, Tuscaloosa]
  • Technology in the Classroom Grant, College of Arts and Sciences, The University of Alabama, Spring 2011
  • Teaching and Learning Grant, College Academy to Improve Student Success, The University of Alabama, Spring 2009
  • Research Grant, Research Advisory Council, The University of Alabama, Spring 2009
  • Additional funding from: National Endowment for the Humanities, Louisville Institute, Princeton Center for the Study of the Religion, Yale University/Pew Foundation, and the American Historical Association
Conference and Research Presentations (Recent and Selected)
  • Chair and Moderator, “Tuscaloosa’s History,” Annual Meeting of the Alabama Historical Association, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, April 25, 2019
  • Chair and Commentator, “King’s Biographer,” Lecture by Dr. Derryn Moten on the first biography of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, January 17, 2019.
  • Chair and Commentator, “The Mississippi Delta and the Long Civil Rights Movement,” Annual Conference, Society of Faith and History, Grand Rapids, MI, October 5, 2018.
  • “Researching World War I,” Over There, Over Here: Alabama and World War I, Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, AL., June 9, 2018.
  • Chair and Commentator, “Difficult Conversations: Power, Resistance, and Periodical Culture,” Annual Meeting of the Southern Association of Women’s Historians, Tuscaloosa, AL., June 8, 2018.
  • “Reflections on Teaching, Research, and Experiential Learning,” Teaching Workshop, College of Arts and Sciences, The University of Alabama, February 17, 2017.
  • Chair and Commentator, “Second Stories: Landscape and Memory on University Campuses,” February 16, 2017, The University of Alabama.
  • “New Directions in Teaching History,” Professional Learning Communities Conference, December 12, 2016, The University of Alabama.
  • Chair and Commentator, “Slavery, Universities, and Remembrance,” The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Al., September 6, 2016.
  • Chair, “The Legacies of Slavery in Reconstruction-Era Christianity,” American Historical Association Annual Conference/Society of Church Historians, Atlanta, GA., January 8-10, 2016.
  • “American Studies and Social Justice,” American Lives and American Studies, Draper Conference in Early American Studies, University of Connecticut, October 9-10, 2014.

Selected Publications

Books

Peer-Reviewed Articles and Chapters (Selected)

  • “The Long Civil Rights Movement.” In Jon Butler, ed., The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2020.)
  • “Religion and the South,” with Paul Harvey. In Lorri Glover and Craig Friend, eds., Rewriting Southern History: Historiographical Essays (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, forthcoming, January 2020).
  • “Black Pentecostalism in the American South.” In Steven Reich, ed., World of Jim Crow: A Daily Life Encyclopedia (New York: Greenwood Press, forthcoming, September 2019.)
  • “Black Religious and Print Culture after the Civil War.” In Oliver Schiedling, ed., Communities of Print Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, December 2017).
  • “The American Missionary Association and African American History,” The Amistad Historical Collection, (London and New York: Adam Mathews/Sage, 2017).
  • “The Mississippi River and the Transformation of Black Religion, 1865-1920.” In Michael Pasquier, ed., Gods of the Mississippi (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013): 113-129.
  • “The African American Religious Press.” In Diane Winston, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Religion and American News Media (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012): 579-592.
  • “For God and Lodge: Black Fraternal Orders and the Evolution of African American Religion in the Postbellum South.” In Vernon Burton, Jerald Podair, and Jenny Weber, eds., The Struggle for Equality: Essays on Sectional Conflict, the Civil War, and the Long Reconstruction (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012): 198-218.
  • “Buying and Selling with God: African American Religion, Race Records, and the Emerging Culture of Mass Consumption.” In Fitzhugh Brundage, ed., Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture, 1890-1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011): 190-213.