Tracy L. Barnett earned her Ph.D. in American History from the University of Georgia in May 2025. Her dissertation, “Yankee Invention, Southern Obsession: Mass-Produced Firearms and the Arming of White Supremacy,” analyzes the historic origins of America’s gun culture and its mutually constitutive relationship to white supremacist ideology.
Her research has been supported by the Smithsonian Institution, American Historical Association; Boston Athenæum; Georgia Historical Society; Winterthur Library; Hagley Museum and Library; University of Virginia; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Louisiana State University Libraries, and other institutions.
Her scholarship has been published in Civil War History, the Georgia Historical Quarterly, and The Washington Post. She regularly contributes a quarterly column on nineteenth-century language to the Civil War Monitor, a popular magazine devoted to the Civil War Era. In addition, she has worked on various digital and public history projects, including the Athens Death Project, the New Georgia Encyclopedia, and at the Atlanta History Center and George Washington's Mount Vernon.
In 2022-2023, she served as an Assistant Teaching Professor of History at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore.
Research
Selected Publications
“Yankee Invention, Southern Obsession: Mass-Produced Firearms and the Arming of White Supremacy” (Dissertation & Book Length Manuscript).
Reconstruction’s Sanctuary City: The Hidden History of Hamburg, South Carolina, co-edited with Carole Emberton (University of South Carolina Press, under advanced contract).
“‘Bow Low Down to Death’: The Gospel Pilgrim Society and Death in the Jim Crow Georgia,” (co-authored with Benjamin Ehlers) Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. CVI, No. 1 (2022): 1-21.
"The Sandy Hook settlement could transform the centuries-old marketing of guns,” Washington Post (February 23, 2022).
“Mississippi ‘Milish’: Militiamen in the Civil War,” Civil War History, Vol. 66, No 4 (December 2020): 343-379.
“Contraband,” “Wide Awakes,” “Juneteenth,” “Shebang,” “Johnny Cake,” “Scallywag,” “Postal Currency,”“Arkansas Toothpick,” "Acknowledge the Corn," “Jumping the Broom,” “Forty Rod,” “French Leave,” “Grapevine Telegraph,” “Seeing the Elephant,” “Suits of Shoddy,” “Grin and Bear it,” “Kicking and Kissing Ass,” and "Bully Boys,” in the “Fighting Words” series, The Civil War Monitor (2020-Present).
Education
PhD, American History, University of Georgia, 2025
MA, American History, University of Southern Mississippi, 2017
BA, History, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, 2014
Other Information
Baird Society Resident Scholar Program, Smithsonian Institution, 2022 (delayed by COVID until 2024)
Albert J. Beveridge Grant, American Historical Association, 2021
Caleb Loring Jr. Fellowship, Boston Athenæum, 2021-2022
Dissertation Fellowship, Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, 2021-2022
Dooley Distinguished Research Fellowship, Georgia Historical Society, 2021-2022
Lewis P. Jones Research Fellowship in South Carolina History, University of South Carolina, 2021
Exploratory Research Grant, Hagley Museum and Library, 2021
John H. Daniels Fellowship, National Sporting Library and Museum, 2021
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation & Humanities Without Walls Pre-Doctoral Career Diversity Fellowship, 2021
Center for Civil War Studies Research Grant, Virginia Tech, 2020-2021
Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellowship, Virginia Museum of History and Culture, 2020
John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History Fellowship, University of Virginia, 2020
Louisiana State University Libraries Special Collections Research Grant, 2020
Pre-Dissertation Prospectus Fellowship, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Summer 2019
