Bob Elder
@southernphd
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Historian of the American South @baylor; wrote a bio of John C. Calhoun for @BasicBooks. NEH Public Scholar, 2025-2026.
Waco, TX
Joined May 2010
Twenty years ago, I read the letters of a college student named John Charles McClenaghan, who led a massive riot at South Carolina College in 1856. The riot happened a few weeks before Preston Brooks caned Charles Sumner, and the two events were connected. It took a while, but
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RT @yuanyi_z: I've only been to a Cracker Barrel once but I will never forget how I ordered a set breakfast and it came out on two plates.….
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RT @HerecomesDrBob: ch@tGPT is a lot like many history students in that it too confuses Madison with Monroe.
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Misadventures in AI historical writing, an ongoing series. I put the following quote into Chat GPT. I already knew the source. Here's the quote:. "In contemplating the scenes which distinguish this momentous epoch, and estimating their claims to our attention, it is impossible.
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It took me weeks to recover from The Known World. .
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Interesting thread. .
1/ Eighty years ago today, on August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was destroyed by an atomic bomb. What’s often forgotten: many on the American Right—including those published in National Review—criticized President Harry Truman’s decision to use nuclear weapons. MORE:
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RT @booksandbbq: This from @southernphd's new essay--if I'm being honest, 170 years later, things haven't changed all that much: USC and Fi….
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"Americans might assume that the height of their nation’s religious commitment was around its Founding. Some likewise figure that spiritually, it’s been going downhill ever since. But in many ways, America became increasingly religious through the first half of the 19th century.".
"The most definitive period of American Christian growth was the Second Great Awakening of the early 1800s." - my latest at @thedispatch.
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RT @southernphd: Twenty years ago, I read the letters of a college student named John Charles McClenaghan, who led a massive riot at South….
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RT @holland_tom: AI is rubbish at history. It just makes stuff up. I gave ChatGBT a go yesterday, thinking it might boost my productivity,….
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"@GutkinLen: When did you begin noticing this phenomenon?. @ashleytrubin: I first started noticing when a number of historians started to become interested in prisons. All of a sudden, in the 2010s, a bunch of historians became interested in mass incarceration. But they didn’t.
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RT @jennfrey: I wrote about the lack of administrative support for the liberal arts in @nytimes. The standard story we hear is that student….
nytimes.com
Students want to study the humanities and liberal arts. But university administrators keep getting in the way.
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RT @robertearlkeen: JUST ANNOUNCED: Robert Earl Keen & Friends—Applause for the Cause. Aug 28 | Whitewater Amphitheater.Tyler Childers • Mi….
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RT @MatthewSitman: Really interesting take on the revival of nullification today and the updated, evolving forms it’s taking, from the auth….
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RT @southernphd: Nullification is associated with right wing radicalism, especially South Carolina in 1832, and southern segregationists in….
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The story of nullification is also about the tension between the idea of judicial supremacy and democracy, especially at the local and state level. Over the past two hundred years or more the Supreme Court has fought a running battle with states and, indirectly, advocates of a.
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RT @yeselson: There is no principled support *or* opposition to federalism that has not been deferred when it blocked a significant policy….
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I also think this whole story would make a great podcast episode. Looking at you, @JonahDispatch!.
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Nullification is associated with right wing radicalism, especially South Carolina in 1832, and southern segregationists in the mid-20th c. It's often portrayed as a fringe political theory. One of the things I try to show in this piece that in the early republic the idea of.
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