Participant Info
- First Name
- Megan Kate
- Last Name
- Nelson
- Country
- United States
- State
- 21
- mkn@historista.com
- Affiliation
- Writer
- Website URL
- http://www.megankatenelson.com
- Keywords
- American Civil War history, U.S. Western history, U.S. Southwestern history, environmental studies, cultural studies, nineteenth-century American history
- Availability
- Media Contact
- Additional Contact Information
- http://www.megankatenelson.com
- PhD
- PhD
Personal Info
- Photo
- About Me
I am a historian writing about the Civil War, U.S. western history, academia, and American culture for the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, Preservation Magazine, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Civil War Times. I also write a regular column on Civil War popular culture, “Stereoscope,” for Civil War Monitor.
My book, The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West, is the recipient of a 2017 NEH Public Scholar Award and was published by Scribner in February 2020.
My new project, This Strange Country: Yellowstone and the Reconstruction of America, will be published with Scribner in spring 2022.
I earned my BA in History and Literature from Harvard University and my PhD in American Studies from the University of Iowa.
I have published two previous books: Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War (George, 2012), and Trembling Earth: A Cultural History of the Okefenokee Swamp (2005).
Profile photo by Sharona Jacobs.
- Recent Publications
“How Historians got Nike to pull an ad campaign – in under six hours,” Washington Post (April 12, 2019)
“One of the 19th century’s most important documents was recently discovered in a New England attic. Here’s what it tells us,” Washington Post (May 22, 2018).
“Let There Be Lights,” Smithsonian Magazine (May 2018): 10-11.
“The West’s Missing War,” Civil War Monitor (Spring 2018).
“Stop Calling Me ‘Independent Scholar,’” The Chronicle Review (October 8, 2017).
“The Civil War from Apache Pass,” Journal of the Civil War Era 6, no. 4 (December 2016): 510-535.
“Forces of Nature: Adobe Forts of the Southwest,” Preservation: The Magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation (Summer 2016): 50-54.
“What Do You Know? A Civil War Pop Quiz,” Disunion Blog, New York Times (June 4, 2015).
- Media Coverage
- @megankatenelson
- Country Focus
- USA
- Expertise by Geography
- United States
- Expertise by Chronology
- 5
- Expertise by Topic
- American Civil War, Art & Architectural History, Environment, Material Culture, Military
