The Border War: Historians

Nicole Etcheson Alexander M. Bracken Professor of History, Ball State University
Teaching and Research Specialties: Sectional crisis, Jacksonian era, Civil War and Reconstruction
Nicole Etcheson joins the Department of History in the Fall 2005 as the Alexander M. Bracken Professor of History. She is the author of The Emerging Midwest: Upland Southerners and the Political Culture of the Old Northwest, 1787-1861 (Indiana University Press, 1996). Etcheson's most recent book on pre-Civil War history entitled, Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era (University Press of Kansas, 2004), was a History Book Club selection. Etcheson received a National Endowment for the Humanities summer stipend in 2004 to begin research on her new book project, The Union Home Front: Putnam County Indiana, in the Civil War Era. In addition to her books, Etcheson is also the author of numerous articles in professional journals as well as a frequent presenter at historical conferences. She is a member of the American Historical Association, Kansas State Historical Society, Organization of American Historians, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, Southern Historical Association, and the Texas State Historical Association. Etcheson comes to Ball State University with twelve years organizing for National History Day at the local and state level, as well as fourteen years of experience in teaching. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Indiana University, Bloomington.

Jonathon Earle
Prof. Earle is the author of The Undaunted Democracy: Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil (UNC Press, 2004); and The Routledge Atlas of African American History (Routledge, 2000) and ; he is currently working on a book on John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry for Bedford/St. Martin's Press. He also directs programming for the Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas. His primary interests are the antislavery and democratic movements of the 19th Century and political history more generally. In support of his research, Earle has received major fellowships from the NEH and the American Council of Learned Societies. He spent the 1999-2000 academic year as a visiting fellow at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

Dr. Diane Mutti Burke, assistant professor of history, University of Missouri - Kansas City.