Dr. Robert Kenzer

Professor of History and American Studies
William Binford Vest Chair of History

325 Ryland Hall
Office: (804) 289-8990
Fax: (804) 287-1992

My research interests examine the impact of the Civil War, particularly on the American South.  I presently am working on a biography of Elizabeth Louisa Knights Harris (1823-1894), a British-born Civil War widow who resided most of her adult life in Louisa and Goochland counties, Virginia as well as following up my earlier study of credit-rated black business firms. Further, I am examining the impact of the Civil War on Richmond's business community.

Research:
19th Century United States, Civil War Era

Education:
Ph.D., Harvard University, 1982

Selected Publications:

Books:

Kinship and Neighborhood in a Southern Community:  Orange County, North Carolina, 1849-1881 (University of Tennessee Press, 1987).

Enterprising Southerners:  Black Economic Success in North Carolina, 1865-1915 (University Press of Virginia, 1997).

Robert C. Kenzer and John C. Inscoe, eds., "Enemies of the Country":  New Perspectives on Unionists in the Civil War South (University of Georgia Press, hardback edition, 2001; paperback edition, 2004).

Articles/Entries:

"The Black Businessman in the Postwar South:  North Carolina, 1865-1880," Business History Review, 63 (Spring 1989):  61-87.  Reprinted in Donald G. Nieman, ed.,  African American Life in the Post-Emancipation South, 1861-1900, Vol. 4 (Garland, 1994).

"Black Business in the South, 1860-1880" in Juliet E.K. Walker, ed., Encyclopedia of African American Business History, (Greenwood Press, 1999).

"'Knowing the Uncertainty of Life & the Certainty of Death':  A Profile of Virginia's Civil War Widows," in Joan E. Cashin, ed., Civilians in the American Civil War (Princeton University Press, 2002).

"John Sherman," in Richard Zuczek, ed., Greenwood Encyclopedia of the Reconstruction Era, (Greenwood Press, 2006).