Participant Info

First Name
Blain
Last Name
Roberts
Country
United States
State
CA California
Affiliation
History Department, California State University, Fresno
Website URL
http://www.fresnostate.edu/socialsciences/historydept/faculty/faculty-broberts.html
Keywords
history of: the U.S. South, women, beauty, beauty pageants, beauty parlors, Miss America Pageant, cosmetics, memory, Confederate memory, southern memory, memory of slavery, tourism, Confederate monuments
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
Email is the best way to contact me, though I do check my office voicemail fairly regularly. (559) 278-8677
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

I have a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and specialize in the history of the U.S. South.

My first book, Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women: Race and Beauty in the Twentieth-Century South (2014), is a history of the pursuit and practices of physical beauty among white and black women during segregation and the Civil Rights Movement.

My second book, Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy (2018; co-authored with Ethan J. Kytle) explores how slavery has been remembered, and mis-remembered, in Charleston, South Carolina from 1865 to the present.

Recent Publications

Books:

Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy (The New Press, 2018) [co-authored with Ethan K. Kytle]

Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women: Race and Beauty in the Twentieth-Century South (UNC Press, 2014)

Op-Eds on Beauty: 

“Black Dolls, White Dolls, and the Desegregation of America’s Public Schools Sixty Years Ago,” Huffington Post, 19 May 2014.

“When Cigarettes Were Good for Women,” History News Network, 17 March 2014

“The Miss America Pageant Still Sends the Wrong Message,” New York Times, “There She Is, Miss America” Room for Debate, 13 September 2013.

“The Ugly Side of the Southern Belle,” New York Times, 16 January 2013, sec. A, p. 21.

Op-Eds on the Memory of Slavery/the Civil War/Confederacy [for full list, visit https://denmarkveseysgarden.com/]:

“When the Fourth of July Was a Black Holiday,” Atlantic, July 3, 2018 [co-authored with Ethan J. Kytle].

“Protesting Rebel Statues Is as Old as the Statues Themselves,” Daily Beast, May 18, 2018 [co-authored with Ethan J. Kytle].

“The Historian Behind Slavery Apologists Like Kanye West,” New York Times, 3 May 2018 [co-authored with Ethan J. Kytle].

“The Lost Cause Roots of Sinclair’s Propaganda,” Washington Post, 11 April 2018 [co-authored with Ethan J. Kytle].

“When the South Was the Most Progressive Region in America,” Atlantic, 17 January 2018 [co-authored with Ethan J. Kytle].

“Remembering Our Original Sin,” Sunday Review, New York Times, 6 December 2015 [co-authored with Ethan J. Kytle].

“Take Down the Confederate Flags, But Not the Monuments,” Atlantic, 25 June 2015 [co-authored with Ethan J. Kytle].

“Birth of a Freedom Anthem,” New York Times, Sunday Review, 14 March 2015, sec. SR, p. 5 [co-authored with Ethan J. Kytle].

Media Coverage
Written for the NYT, Wa Po, Atlantic, Fresno Bee. Appeared on C-Span. Interviewed by the LA Times, Wa Po, Time, Mother Jones, Time, History Channel, Elle, Allure.
Country Focus
United States
Expertise by Geography
United States
Expertise by Chronology
20th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
American Civil War, Emancipation, Gender, Local & Regional, Museums, Public History, Race, Rural & Agrarian History, Women