David Silkenat

Ph.D. (2007)

silkenat@email.unc.edu

Major Field: U. S. History, Nineteenth Century Social History, Southern History

Other Fields: Ancient History, Colonial History, North Carolina History,  Civil War and Reconstruction, Slavery and African American History, U.S. Social and Cultural History, Class and Gender, Historical Archaeology

Advisor: Fitz Brundage

Research Interests:

I recently defended my dissertation which explores shifting social mores in North Carolina over the course of the nineteenth century.  I employ suicide, divorce, and debt as specific lenses through which to examine these shifts.  The Civil War forced a fundamental reinterpretation of moral sentiments towards these practices and the nature of this reinterpretation was predicated on race.  White North Carolinians stigmatized suicide, divorce, and debt during the antebellum period.  The Civil War undermined these entrenched attitudes, forcing them to reinterpret suicide, divorce, and debt in a new social, cultural, and economic context.  Antebellum black North Carolinians, on the other hand, held very different attitudes towards suicide, divorce, and debt, shaped by slavery’s injustices.  The Civil War and emancipation created the opportunity for them to create new moral constructs.

Blending social, economic, cultural, and medical history, and borrowing methodological tools from anthropology and sociology, my dissertation seeks to explicate how these changing moral sentiments reflect broader patterns of thought and action.  For whites, this transformation entailed a shift from a world in which individuals were tightly bound to their local community to one in which they were increasingly untethered from social expectations.  For black North Carolinians, however, these trends headed in the opposite direction, as emancipation lay the groundwork for new bonds of community.  Drawing upon a robust and diverse body of sources, including insane asylum records, divorce petitions, bankruptcy filings, diaries, and personal correspondence, my dissertation describes a society turned upside down as a consequence of a devastating war.

I recently received the William F. Holmes Award from the Southern Historical Association for the best paper presented at the SHA Annual Conference in Richmond, Virginia.  I also recently received the G.E.A.B. Impact Award from the UNC Graduate School.

For several years, I have been the History Department's Teaching Technology Coordinator, running the department website, and managing the department computer lab.

I regularly participate in the Triangle Early American History Seminar, serving as secretary and webmaster.

I also work on the Extending the Reach of Southern Sources project at the Southern Historical Collection.