Paul Barba Joins Us as Field Correspondent

As longtime readers know, at Muster we publish pieces that are commissioned or submitted to us for consideration, but we also have a slate of field correspondents who write regular “dispatches”–posts that explore the varied facets of life in the Civil War era and help readers broaden their understanding of the period. We are pleased to announce that we have a new correspondent joining us in 2020, writing on the Civil War in the West and borderlands history. Paul Barba is an assistant professor of history at Bucknell University. He graduated with a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2016. His first book project, tentatively titled Country of the Cursed and the Driven: Slavery and the Texas Borderlands, tracks and analyzes the multiple forms of slaving violence that emerged, dominated, and intersected throughout Texas from the early eighteenth century into the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is currently under contract with the University of Nebraska Press. Prior to Bucknell, Dr. Barba served as a managing editor at the journal Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos. Welcome to the team!

We would also like to thank Maria Angela Diaz, who was our first correspondent covering Western topics. She stepped down to focus on writing her manuscript, currently titled Saving the Southern Empire: The Gulf South, Latin America, and the Civil War. Thank you, Angela, for your contributions to Muster!