Robert Bland joins University of Tennessee faculty
WASHINGTON, DC August 5, 2019 – Institute alumnus Robert Bland has joined the faculty at the University of Tennessee as an Assistant Professor of History. The brief profile of him on the university’s website reads:
Robert Bland joins the UT Department of History as an assistant professor after having been a faculty member in history at St. John’s University in Queens. His research explores late nineteenth and early twentieth century African American life and culture. In particular, his work investigates the legacy of the Fifteenth Amendment, the racial politics of disaster relief, and the intellectual history of the Gullah-Geechee.
His upcoming book project, ‘Requiem for Reconstruction’: The South Carolina Lowcountry and the Afterlife of Radical Republicanism, follows a group of politicians, writers, educators, and intellectuals, both academic and vernacular, who sought to use the history of Reconstruction to defend black suffrage, make claims for disaster relief, establish schools, and, ultimately, contest anti-black academic narratives about black progress in the postbellum South.
Bland earned his PhD from the University of Maryland in 2017. When not in the archives, he enjoys playing pick-up basketball, travelling inordinately long distances to hear rappers from the nineties, and trying street food in different cities.
Bland has also taught the Lynde and Harry Bradley Seminar on Constitutional and Economic Principles at the Institute.
