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Douglas Bristol

Dr. Douglas Bristol

Associate Professor

Bio

Douglas Bristol is a historian of the African American experience. In his teaching and research, he focuses on the beliefs, institutions, and strategies that ordinary Americans developed to exercise control over their lives. In his first book, Knights of the Razor: Black Barbers in Slavery and Freedom (reissued in paperback in 2015), Bristol examines the relationship between black barbers and the prosperous white men whose throats they shaved with straight-edged razors from the colonial period to the Great Migration. He co-edited Integrating the U.S. Military: Race, Gender, and Sexuality Since World War II, to which he contributed a chapter on understanding the resistance of black soldiers during World War II. His current book project, Khaki Globe Trotters, explores how black GIs used military service in World War II to claim the New Deal's promise of security. The Art of Manliness podcast and the PBS documentary, Boss: The Black Experience in Business, featured his work.

  • African American HIstory, Race and Ethnicity (PHD) - University of Maryland-University College (2002)
  • MA - University of North Carolina at Greensboro (1993)
  • BA - University of North Carolina at Greensboro (1988)

Undergraduate Courses:
HIS 370: Mississippi History
HIS 375: Economic History of the United States
HIS 400: That Seventies Research Seminar
HIS 416: World War II
HIS 465: Prosperity, Depression, and World War II
HIS 466: U.S. Since 1945
HIS 469: History of the New South
HIS 478: Topics in African American History

Graduate Courses:
HIS 773: Seminar in African American History

  • Integrating the U.S. Military: Race, Gender, and Sexuality since World War II, 2017
  • Soldiers know inclusiveness creates a better fighting force. Donald Trump should listen to them, Washington Post, 2017
  • "Queering South Mississippi: Simple and Seemingly Impossible Work", Educators Queering Academia: Critical Memoirs, 2016
  • Knights of the Razor: Black Barbers in Slavery and Freedom, 2015

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Contact Me

Elizabeth Hall (EH) 322 map

Gulf Park

Email
Douglas.BristolFREEMississippi

Phone
228.214.3247

Areas of Expertise

African American history, Business history, U.S. race relations, War and Society