Episode 5 - William Fitzhugh Brundage
William Fitzhugh Brundage is the William B. Umstead Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. His research focuses on American history since the Civil War. His scholarship includes studies on lynching, utopian socialism in the New South, white and black historical memory in the post-Civil War South, and the history of torture in the United States from the time of European contact to the twenty-first century. He is currently working on a study of Civil War prisoners of war camps. Dr. Brundage received his B.A. from the University of Chicago and an M.A. and PhD from Harvard University in 1988.
He is the author of many books including Civilizing Torture: An American Tradition; A Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory; Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930; and A Socialist Utopia in the New South: the Ruskin Colonies in Tennessee and Georgia, 1894-1901. He has served as editor for numerous works including Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture, 1890-1930; Booker T. Washington and Black Progress: Up from Slavery 100 Years Later; Where These Memories Grow: History, Memory; and Under Sentence of Death: Essays on Lynching in the South. He has contributed to dozens of works and more than forty reviews in journals such as the American Historical Review, Journal of American History, and the American Journal of Legal History. His most recent work is as editor for The New History of the American South released in May 2023, a work that expands the notion of how the South is defined by, for example, including the history of the indigenous populations that lived in the U. S. South before colonization.
He is the recipient of many awards, including the Charles Sydnor Award for distinguished book in Southern history from the American Historical Association for The Southern Past. He was a 2019 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History for Civilizing Torture: An American Tradition. He won the Merle Curtis Award from the Organization of American Historians in 1994 for Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880–1930.
In this interview Dr. Brundage talks about his forty-year friendship with Dr. Bischof that began as fellow graduate students at Harvard University, and how this friendship has inspired him in his own work. He reflects on Dr. Bischof’s “catholic” curiosity and the unlikely bond between a man from a small village in Austria with his new home in New Orleans. Dr. Brundage talks about his own love of New Orleans history and Gulf coast oysters. He also reflects on his life as a historian, recalling childhood memories of reading Civil War maps that inspired him to become a historian. He discusses how history has changed in his lifetime and why it is still important.
Interviewers:
Yvette Rubio is in the master's Program at the University of New Orleans. Her research focuses on late nineteenth century New Orleans.
Eli Musso is an undergraduate at the University of New Orleans. He is majoring in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in community and leadership with a minor in management.