Brenda Jackson-Abernathy

Biography

I am a transplanted Westerner and grew up in Idaho and California. I earned my B.A. and M.A. degrees at San Jose State University in California, and my doctorate at Washington State University in Pullman, under the tutelage of my hero, Sue Armitage, a pioneer in western women's history. I taught at San Jose State University, Washington State University, the University of Idaho, and Gonzaga University before joining the History faculty at Belmont in the fall of 2003. I teach 18th and 19th century U.S. history courses, as well as courses on Latin American history and Women's history. I also teach the second of the History Department's three-course methods sequence, “Writing History,” and have taught ILCs with colleagues from Biology, English, Music, and Art. I am the author of Domesticating the West. The Re-creation of the Nineteenth-Century American Middle Class (Nebraska, 2005), and am currently working on projects involving women and Middle Tennessee during the Civil War, and women in the nineteenth-century American West.

I am an avid sports fan and spent a good deal of my young life at the Oakland Coliseum watching the A's and Raiders during their glory years. My husband is a Tennessee grad, and we travel to Knoxville to cheer on the Vols, though the Pac-12 will always be first in my heart - GO COUGS! We have two grown daughters, attend the symphony and theater as often as time permits, and enjoy traveling, visiting historic sites, and the peace and solitude of the mountains.

I love history - and have since I was a little girl. I love teaching history and helping students understand there is much more to its study than the memorization of names and dates. My goal is for students to understand the world around them - and the best way to do that is to study history. "Understanding" doesn't necessarily mean "agreeing with" - a hard lesson for students to learn, but once they do - the world is their oyster! As the great philosopher Aristotle wrote, "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Think about it - and take a history class!!

Selected Recent Publications and Presentations

"Adelicia Acklen: Beyond the 'Belmont' Legend and Lore," Tennessee Historical Quarterly 75:1 (Spring 2017): 2-43.

“Methods in Teaching Region and Diversity in U.S. Western Women’s History,” The History Teacher 46:2 (February 2013): 215-230.

“The Civil War Diaries of William Lawrence and Kate Carney: A Research Note on Under-Utilized Sources,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 73:1 (Spring 2014): 52-73.

The Wide Northwest, by Leoti L. West. New Introduction by Brenda K. Jackson. 1^st edition, Spokane, WA: Shaw & Borden, 1927; reprint ed., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.

Domesticating the West: The Re-Creation of the Nineteenth-Century American Middle Class, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.

“Interruption of the Even ‘tenor of our way’”: Middle Tennessee Women in Occupation and Reconstruction,” Southern Association of Women Historians Triennial Conference, Charleston, SC, June 2015

“’For the Sake of the Cotton!’ PlantationWomen in 1864 Civil War Louisiana,” Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference, New Orleans, LA, April 2015