Professor Behrend is a scholar of the Reconstruction era.
Dr. Justin Behrend, professor of history and graduate program coordinator, has been a member of the SUNY Geneseo faculty since 2007. His research interests include nineteenth-century U.S. history, African American history, Atlantic World slavery, and Southern history. Dr. Behrend is the author of Reconstructing Democracy: Black Grassroots Politics in the Deep South after the Civil War and articles on slave rebellions, emancipation, and Reconstruction. He was the department chair from 2017 to 2022.
Office Hours
M-W 10:00 am - 11:30 am, T 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm, or by appointment.
Curriculum Vitae
Education
Ph.D. in History, Northwestern University
Publications
Reconstructing Democracy: Black Grassroots Politics in the Deep South after the Civil War (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015)
“When Neighbors Turn against Neighbors: Irregular Warfare and the Crisis of Democracy in the Civil War Era,” in Beyond Freedom: Disrupting the History of Emancipation, ed. David W. Blight and James Downs (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017), 90-103.
“Facts, Memories, and History: John R. Lynch and the Memory of Reconstruction in the Age of Jim Crow” in Remembering Reconstruction: Struggles Over the Meaning of America's Most Turbulent Era, edited by Carole Emberton and Bruce E. Baker (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017), 84-108.
"Fear of Reenslavement: Black Political Mobilization in Response to the Waning of Reconstruction" in Rethinking American Emancipation: Legacies of Slavery and the Quest for Black Freedom, edited by William A. Link and James J. Broomall (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 146-163.
"Black Political Mobilization and the Spatial Transformation of Natchez" in Confederate Cities: The Urban South During the Civil Era, edited by Andrew L. Slap and Frank Towers (University of Chicago Press, 2015), 190-214.
"Facts and Memories: John R. Lynch and the Revising of Reconstruction History in the Era of Jim Crow," Journal of African American History 97, no. 4 (Fall 2012): 427-448.
"Rumors of Revolt," New York Times, September 15, 2011.
"Rebellious Talk and Conspiratorial Plots: The Making of a Slave Insurrection in Civil War Natchez," Journal of Southern History 77, no. 1 (February 2011): 17-52.
More About Me
Research Interests
- Nineteenth Century U.S.
- African American
- Civil War and Emancipation
Awards and Honors
- McLemore Prize for best book in Mississippi History, 2016
- Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2013
Websites
Classes
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HIST 301: Topic: Reconstruction
This is one of two required skills-based seminars in the History major and is focused on critical reading and analysis. This class introduces students to the concept of historiography, which includes the critical assessment of the methods and sources that historians use in fashioning an argument, the contexts that inform historians' approaches to understanding the past, and comparisons of different historians' conclusions about similar topics. All sections will focus on a specific set of historical issues and/or events chosen by the instructor and class content emphasizes critical reflection on the variety of historical interpretations that are possible within a given topic. This class is reading and writing intensive.
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HIST 407: Slave Reb & Res-Atlantic World
This course examines slave rebellions and resistance in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in a wide variety of locales, including the United States, the Caribbean, and South America. Our goals will be to examine what constitutes a slave rebellion, how resistance differed from rebellion, how revolts were organized, how they impacted local communities as well as nation-states, and how various forms of resistance altered slaveholder power. This course will give you a sense of what slavery was like in the New World, and how historical events, such as the French and Haitian revolutions, altered slave regimes, and how slave rebels shaped the abolitionist movement. In addition, we will explore how historians have interpreted the fragmentary evidence on revolts and conspiracies. Prerequisite: HIST 302 (HIST 301 also recommended).