James Hill Welborn III (Trae)

James Hill Welborn III (Trae) completed his Ph.D. at the University of Georgia in May 2014. He studies the moral ethics of honor and religious piety in the 19th-Century South, with a particular focus on the evolving cultural meanings of and reactions to masculine vice and violence. His dissertation, entitled “Drinkin’, Fightin’, Prayin’: The Southern White Male in the Civil War Era,” used Edgefield, South Carolina as a window into the development of righteous honor, the ethical ideal he argues was at the heart of southern manhood and identity during the era. He has co-authored an article with Stephen Berry entitled “The Cane of his Existence: Depression, Damage, and the Brooks-Sumner Affair” published in Southern Cultures. Another article entitled “Dispensing the Progressive State: Benjamin Tillman’s South Carolina State Dispensary” was published in The Social History of Alcohol & Drugs: An Interdisciplinary Journal. He has reviewed works for The Journal of American Ethnic History, The Journal of Southern Religion, Southern Historian, The Journal of the Civil War Era, The North Carolina Historical Quarterly, Civil War History, and The Civil War Monitor.