Prof. Douglas Ambrose


Department of History

Hamilton College

Clinton, New York 13323

(315) 734-1029 (home)
(315) 859-4134 (work)
dambrose@hamilton.edu

EDUCATION

PhD 1991, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, New York
Master of Arts 1984, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York
Bachelor of Arts 1979, Rutgers College, New Brunswick, New Jersey

WORK EXPERIENCE

2009-2012 Chairman, Department of History, Hamilton College
2008- Professor of History, Hamilton College
2006-2007 Acting Chairman, Department of History, Hamilton College
2002-2007 The Sidney Wertimer Jr. Associate Professor of History
Fall 2005 Acting Chairman, Department of History, Hamilton College
1997- Associate Professor of History, Hamilton College
1992-1997 Assistant Professor of History, Hamilton College
1991-1992 Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History, Hamilton College

AWARDS AND SCHOLARSHIPS

2006 Christian Johnson Sabbatical Fellowship, Hamilton College
2003 Selected to participate in the seminar The Political History of the Early Republic: New Challenges, Old Strengths, at Columbia University, sponsored by The Council of Independent Colleges and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
2002 Named the Sidney Wertimer Jr. Associate Professor of History, Hamilton College
1996 Class of 1963 Excellence in Teaching Award, Hamilton College
1994 Hamilton college Nominee, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, U.S. Professors of the Year Program.
1992 Mellon Research Fellowship, Virginia Historical Society

TEACHING AND RESEARCH INTERESTS

  • The Old South;
  • Antebellum Southern Intellectual History;
  • Christianity in America;
  • Colonial America;
  • Revolutionary and Early National America.

CONFERENCES ORGANIZED

2008 Co-directed and participated in the the first annual Carl B. Menges colloquium, Liberty and Slavery: The Civil War Between Gerrit Smith and George Fitzhugh, sponsored by the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization and held at the Turning Stone Casino and Resort, April 10-12, 2008. The conference featured fourteen scholars from around the country and examined the coming of the Civil War through the writings of abolitionist Gerrit Smith and proslavery advocate George Fitzhugh. Smith and Fitzhugh were related through marriage and corresponded with each other for over twenty years.
2001 Organized and conducted the conference The Life and Legacy of Alexander Hamilton, held at Hamilton College, April 5-7, 2001. The conference featured over 20 scholars from around the country and examined Hamilton’s significance to the history of the early republic and to subsequent American history.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE

  • Contributor, educational website companion to The American Experience: John and Abigail Adams, WGBH, Boston
  • Board of Editors, Mohawk Valley History.
  • Trustee, Oneida County Historical Society, 1995-2000; Vice President for Historical Activities, 1997-2000.
  • Manuscript reader, The Journal of Southern History
  • Manuscript reader, University of Missouri Press
  • Manuscript reader, University of South Carolina Press
  • Manuscript reader, University Press of Mississippi
  • Manuscript reader, HarperCollins Publishers
  • Manuscript reader, Longman Publishers
  • Chair, Best First Book Prize Committee, The Historical Society (2001)
  • Chair, Melvin Bradford Dissertation Prize Committee, The St. George Tucker Society for Southern Studies, 1997-2007

BIBLIOGRAPHY

– BOOK
Henry Hughes and Proslavery Thought in the Old South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996).

– ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS
– “Modeling the Dedicated Life: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese as Teacher, Mentor, and Friend,” in History & Women, Culture & Faith: Selected Writings of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Volume 5: Unbought Grace: An Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Reader, Rebecca Fox and Robert L. Paquette, eds., (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2012).
– “Slavery and Religion,” in Robert L. Paquette and Mark Smith, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Slavery in the Americas (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
– “Masters,” co-authored with Eugene D. Genovese, in Robert L. Paquette and Mark Smith, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Slavery in the Americas (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
– “Seeking Truth: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese’s Intellectual Pilgrimage,” in The Christendom Review, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2008; appeared May 2009)
– “Introduction: The Life and Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton,” in Douglas Ambrose and Robert Martin, eds., The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton: The Life and Legacy of America’s Most Elusive Founder (New York: New York University Press, 2006).
– “Sowing Sentiment: Shaping the Southern Presbyterian Household, 1750-1800,” Georgetown Law Journal Volume 90, No. 1, November 2001, 143-160.
– “Statism in the Old South: A Reconsideration,” in Robert L. Paquette and Louis Ferleger, eds., Slavery, Secession, and Southern History (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000).
– “Of Stations and Relations: Proslavery Christianity in Early National Virginia,” in John R. McKivigan and Mitchell Snay, eds., Religion and the Antebellum Debate Over Slavery (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998).

– EDITED BOOKS
The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton: The Life and Legacy of America’s Most Elusive Founding Father co-edited with Robert Martin (New York: New York University Press, 2006; paperback, 2007).

– ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES
– “Southern Intellectual Life, 1838-1877,” in Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History (New York, 2001).
– “Defenses of Slavery,” “Christianity: An Overview,” “Protestantism,” and “Bible: Jewish and Christian Interpretations,” all in The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Slavery (New York, 1998).

– RECENT BOOK REVIEWS
– Review of Albert Taylor Bledsoe: Defender of the Old South and Architect of the Lost Cause by Terry A. Barnhart in The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, forthcoming.
– Review of America, Empire of Liberty: A New History of the United States by David Reynolds in The Journal of Southern History, Volume 78, #3, August 2012.
– Review of Majority Rule Versus Consensus: The Political Thought of John C. Calhoun by James Read in Slavery and Abolition, Volume 31, # 4, 2010.
– Review of Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860 by Michael O’Brien in American Historical Review, Volume 110, #2, April 2005.
– Review of All That Makes a Man: Love and Ambition in the Civil War South by Stephen W. Berry III in Journal of Southern History, Volume 70, #4, November 2004.
– Review of The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina by Manisha Sinha in Slavery and Abolition, Volume 23, #3, December 2002.
– Review of Volumes XXIV and XXV of The Papers of John C. Calhoun edited by Clyde Wilson and Shirley Bright Cook in Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Volume CXXV, #4, October 2001.
– Review of Black Judas: William Hannibal Thomas and The American Negro by John David Smith in Slavery and Abolition, Volume 22, #2, August 2001.
– Review of “Right or Wrong, God Judge Me,” The Writings of John Wilkes Booth edited by John Rhodehamel and Louise Taper in Slavery and Abolition, Volume 19, #3, December 1998.
– Review of Yankee Town, Southern City: Race and Class Relations in Civil War Lynchburg by Steven Elliott Tripp in Labor History, Volume 39, #1, February 1998.
– Review of Slavery in North Carolina, 1748-1775 by Marvin L. Michael Kay and Lorin Lee Cary in Journal of Social History, Volume 31, #1, Fall 1997.

CONFERENCE PARTICIPATION
– Invited Participant, “Slavery and Southern History: The Work of Eugene D. Genovese,” at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 25 March 2011.
– Invited Participant, Alexander Hamilton Institute’s Third Annual Carl B. Menges Colloquium, “Dedicated to a Proposition?: Examining the Relation between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution,” Verona, NY, 15-18 April 2010.
– Invited Participant: Liberty Fund Conference, “”Liberty and Responsibility in Bertand de Jouvenel’s The Pure Theory of Politics,” Savannah, GA, 21-24 January 2010.
– Invited Participant: T.R.R. Cobb Forum on Southern Jurisprudence, “Liberty and Slavery: The Challenge of T. R. R. Cobb,” Athens, GA, 20-23 August 2009.
– Invited Participant: Liberty Fund Conference, “Alexander Hamilton on Executive Power as the Engine of Liberty,” Indianapolis, IN, 11-14 June 2009.
– Invited Participant: Liberty Fund Conference, “James Graham Wilson and the Spanish Traditionalists,” Savannah, GA, 17-20 January 2009.

SCHOLARLY PAPERS PRESENTED
– “’Man’s mind is notoriously fallible’: Robert L. Dabney’s Critique of Alexander Campbell,” presented at the Alexander Campbell Symposium, Bethany College, West Virginia, 25 October 2003.
– “Sowing Sentiment: Shaping the Southern Presbyterian Household, 1750-1800,” presented at “Justice, Democracy, and Humanity: A Celebration of the Work of Mark Tushnet,” Georgetown University Law Center, 30 March 2001.
– “Hollywood and the American Revolution,” presented at “The Changing Meaning of the American Revolution,” Marist College, 7 October 2000.
– “The Early National Roots of Proslavery Presbyterianism,” presented at the Brunel/Cambridge Early American Colloquium at Brunel University, London, England, 28 June 1999.
– “Slavery and Southern Culture,” presented at the American Moments Teacher Institute Program, Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts, 15 July 1998.
– “The Role of the State in the Thought of Henry Hughes and James Henley Thornwell,” presented at the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southern Intellectual History Circle, Cambridge University, 16 May 1996.
– “The Economic Defense of Slavery and its Proslavery Critics,” presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Economic and Business History, Savannah, Georgia, 27 April 1996.
– “Proslavery Christianity in Early National Virginia,” presented at the 16th Annual Meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early National Republic, 17 July 1994.

RECENT PUBLIC TALKS AND PRESENTATIONS
– “God and the Home Front: Religious Perceptions of the Civil War, 1861-1865,” presented to the General Daniel Butterfield Civil War Roundtable, Whitestown, New York, 7 November 2011.
– “’We are Two Peoples’: Southern Nationalism and the Coming of the Civil War,” presented as part of the series “The American Civil War: A History of Ordinary People In Extraordinary Times,” at Camden County College, Blackwood, NJ, 21 September 2011.
– “Roger Williams’s Dilemmas: Navigating Church and State in Early America,” presented at the Erasmus Institute of Liberal Arts, Canterbury, NH, 24 October 2010.
– “’We are Two Peoples’: Southern Nationalism and the Coming of the Civil War,” presented at the Onondaga County Civil War Roundtable, 17 December 2009.
– “’The Past is Another Country’: History and the Liberal Arts,” presented at the Erasmus Institute of Liberal Arts, Manchester, NH 4 December 2009.
– “’The Past is Another Country’: Reflections on History and the Humanities,” presented at the NEH-Sponsored Faculty Development Initiative, “From Inquiry to Innovation: Integrating the Humanities into General Education,” Hostos Community College, CUNY, 30 October 2009.
– “Of Civil Relations and Civil War: The Strange and Revealing Correspondence of Peterboro’s Gerrit Smith and Virginia’s George Fitzhugh,” presented to the Little Thinkers, Hamilton College, 15 May 2008.
– “Southerners Against the South: The Opposition to Slavery in the Old South,” presented to the General Daniel Butterfield Civil War Roundtable, Whitestown, New York, 3 March 2008.
– “Southern Nationalism and the Coming of the Civil War,” presented at the Abner Doubleday Civil War Roundtable, Milford, New York, 30 April 2007.
– “Missionaries to the Indians of the Mohawk Valley,” Keynote Address, The Association of Public Historians of New York State, 2007 Spring Conference, Utica, New York, 29 April 2007.
– “The Perils of Posterity: Alexander Hamilton and the Politics of Reputation,” Keynote Address celebrating the NEH exhibit, “Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America,” Cy-Fair College, Houston, Texas, 25 January 2007.
– “George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Economic Crisis of the Early Republic,” presented at the Fairfax County Public Schools’ Teaching American History Grant Program: “Securing the Blessings of Liberty,” Mount Vernon, Virginia, 17 January 2007.
– “The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton,” Panel Discussion (with Robert Martin and Richard Brookhiser), New-York Historical Society, New York, New York, 21 September 2006.
– “‘We Have Sinned, and God Has Smitten Us’: The White South’s Response to Defeat,” presented to the General Daniel Butterfield Civil War Roundtable, Utica, New York, 7 August 2006.
– “Samuel Kirkland: Missionary, Patriot, Founder,” presented at the dedication of the New York State Historical Marker commemorating the founding of Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, 1 July 2006.
– “Charles Finney and the Burned-Over District,” presented as part of the Oneida Community Mansion House’s lecture series, “Central New York in the 19th Century,” Oneida, New York, 1 November 2005.
– “The Plantation on the Hill: The South’s Vision of a Slaveholding Civilization,” presented to the General Daniel Butterfield Civil War Roundtable, Utica, New York, 7 March 2005.
– “Oneida County and the Second Great Awakening,” Oneida County Historical Society, Utica, New York, 20 November 2004.