Department of History

MA 1994 "From Powder-Puffs to Speed Queens: Women's Participation in the National Air Races, 1929-1939."

PhD 1993 "Raw Material Constraints and Technological Options in the Mines and Furnaces of the Birmingham District: 1876-1930"

MA 1991 "The Formation of the Duchy of Warsaw, 1806-1808"
PhD 1996 "Napoleon and the Szlachta: The Reconstitution of an Elite"

MA 1994 "Fallow Are the Hills: A Century of Rural Modernization in the Arkansas Ozarks"
PhD 1999 "A Social History of the Arkansas Ozarks"

MA 1991 "Montaigne Unplumed: The Pyrrhonian Design of the Essays as a Response to the Troubles of Late Sixteenth-Century France"

MA 1991 "Bloody Sunday: Riot In Trafalgar Square 13 November 1887"

MA 1991 "The Woman's Christian Temperance Union From 1874 to 1898: The Union Signal's Promotion of Woman Suffrage and the Prohibition Party"

MA 1992 "The Peculiar Leaf and the Peculiar Institution: A History of Tobacco and Slavery In the Virginia District"

MA 1994 "Charlie Dobbins: Southern Liberal Journalist"

MA 1991 "Us Poor Country People Need Help': The Impact of Federal Maternity and Infancy Legislation in Alabama 1920-1935"
PhD 1999 "No Place for a Christian': Women Inmates in Alabama Prisons, 1901-1943"

MA 1993 "Passing Time On A Colonial Frontier: An Analysis of the Sports and Games of the Southeastern Indians and the Settlers of the Virginia and Carolina Backcountry"

PhD 1993 "London City Politics During the Age of the American Revolutionary War: 1760-1783"

MA 1992 "Horace Wilkinson and Alabama Politics, 1887-1957"
PhD 1996 "The Ku Klux Klan in Alabama, 1915-1954"

MA 1991 "Thomas Mcadory Owen: Preserver of Alabama History"

MA 1990 "The Tudor Succession: A Study of the Monarch and Parliament: From the Reign of Henry VII Through the Reign of Mary I, 1485-1558"

MA 1992 "Hit Or Miss: An Analysis of the AZON Guided Bomb's Effectiveness in World War II"

MA 1991 "The New Woman in the New South: Female Network Building in Birmingham, Alabama, 1915-1930"

MA 1994 "Remembering the Reformation: English Testimony Before the Mexican Inquisition (1572-1575)"

MA 1994 "The Origins and Development of the New Departure"

PhD 1993 "They Stayed On: The British Settler Community At Natchez, 1765-1800"

PhD 1991 "Charles A. Peabody: A 'Southern' Reformer, Horticulturalist, and Nationalist"

MA 1990 "The Civilian Conservation Corps in Alabama"

MA 1992 "Mississippi Massacre: The Carrollton Courthouse Tragedy of 1886"

MA 1993 "Road to Ruin: The New Orleans Tehuantepec Rail Road Company, 1849-1852, and United States-Mexican Isthmian Policy"

MA 1993 "Elizabeth I, Faction and Government, 1558-1566"

MA 1990 "Jérôme Bonaparte as a Military Commander"

MA 1992 "W. Cameron Forbes, American Diplomacy and the Manchurian Crisis, 1931-1932"

MA 1993 "To Guide My Own Ship: E. Walter Burkhardt and the Historic American Buildings Survey"

MA 1991 "Defending the Home Front: The Alabama State Council of Defense, 1917-1919"

MA 1994 "Marriage Alliances and Factional Politics In Late Henrician England (1527-1547)"

MA 1991 "Shots In the Dark: Lynching In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1933"

PhD 1993 "American Beatles: From Popular Culture to Counterculture"

PhD 1993 "The Bringing of Wonder: The Effect of European Trade on the Indians of the Southern Backcountry, 1700-1783"

MA 1990 "John Herbert Orr and the Building of the Magnetic Recording Industry, 1945-1960"

MA 1990 "Sea Island Cotton, 1785-1861: Cornerstone of the Kingdom"

MA 1994 "The Political Career of Alabama Treasurer Isaac Harvey Vincent"

MA 1994 "Fred Allison, Magneto-Optics, and the Gray Area of Science"

MA 1984 "Rex V. Shipley (1783-84): Libel Laws on Trial in Eighteenth-Century England"
PhD 1990 "Trading Mortality for Plagues: The Political Utilization of Military Defeat in Eighteenth-Century England"

PhD 1992 "Ripe For Revolt: Louisiana and the Tradition of Slave Insurrection, 1803-1865"

MA 1993 "Social Unrest at Versailles: Madame de Maintenon and the System of Etiquette and Hierarchy at the Court of Louis XIV"

PhD 1994 "John Archibald Campbell: A Biography"

PhD 1993 "'Saving the Good Earth': Mark Lovel Nichols, Soil Dynamics, and the Pioneering of Agricultural Engineering"

MA 1993 "Henry Bouquet and the Development of British Light Infantry in the French and Indian War"

Born and raised in North Alabama, Gene A. Smith grew up on a small farm that grew cattle, corn, and soybeans. With such a background it was no surprise that he wanted to be a veterinarian. Fortunately a college course in chemistry put him on the path to becoming a historian. Gene completed both his undergraduate (B.A., 1984) and graduate training (M.A. 1987; Ph.D., 1991) in history at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama. Studying early American history and specializing in Jeffersonian politics and military policy, he wrote his dissertation on "The Ruinous Folly of A Navy: A History of the Jeffersonian Gunboat Program," and his M.A. thesis on "The Propaganda Campaign of Thomas Oliver Larkin," both under the direction of Professor Frank L. Owsley, Jr. He then spent three years teaching at Montana State University-Billings before moving to Texas Christian University in the fall of 1994. There he has been teaching U.S. survey history and undergraduate and graduate level courses on early American history. He is currently serving as the Director of the Center for Texas Studies.

Gene's major publications include the following books: A British Eyewitness at the Battle of New Orleans: The Memoir of Royal Navy Admiral Robert Aitchison, 1808-1827 (Historic New Orleans Collection, 2004); Thomas ap Catesby Jones: Commodore of Manifest Destiny (Naval Institute Press, 2000); a revised and updated edition of Arsène Lacarrière Latour's, Historical Memoir of the War in West Florida and Louisiana, 1814-15: With an Atlas (The Historic New Orleans Collection and the University Press of Florida, 1999); Filibusters and Expansionists: Jeffersonian Manifest Destiny, 1800-1821, with Frank L. Owsley, Jr., (University of Alabama Press, 1997); Iron and Heavy Guns: Duel Between the "Monitor" and "Merrimac" (McWhiney Foundation Press, 1996); and, "For the Purposes of Defense": The Politics of the Jeffersonian Gunboat Program (University of Delaware Press, 1995).

He is presently working on several smaller projects dealing with the War of 1812, including a study of African American combatants, as well as co-authoring an American military history textbook. Additionally, Gene has received internal research awards from Montana State University-Billings and TCU, as well as fellowships from the Henry E. Huntington Library, the Virginia Historical Society, the U.S. Department of the Navy, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Gene is an active member of several organizations, most notably the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (currently acting as the organization's Treasurer), the Gulf South Historical and Humanities Association, and the North American Society for Oceanic History. Since 1998 Gene has been co-editor of the University Press of Florida's book series New Perspective on Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology.

Married to Tracy, they have one son (Banning Allen Franklin), two adopted dogs (Anna and Mini); Tracy also has a one-eyed cat named Jake. Gene's hobbies include sports, especially basketball, cooking, traveling, and gardening.

MA 1987 "The Propaganda Campaign of Thomas Oliver Larkin"
PhD 1991 "The Ruinous Folly of A Navy: A History of the Jeffersonian Gunboat Program"
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MA 1992 "In Defense of the Victorian Empire: Military Effectiveness in the British Indian Army"
PhD 2000 "'Missis Victorier's Sons': A History of the Victoria Cross and the Evolution of the British Concept of Heroism"

MA 1991 "Educating Blacks in Reconstruction Alabama: John Silsby, the American Missionary Association, and the Freedmen's Bureau"

MA 1993 "The Rape of Mary Queen of Scots"

MA 1994 "Poverty and Programs: The Alabama Department of Human Resources, 1919-1991"

MA 1992 "Episcopal Mission Styles: A Study of Evangelical and Parochial Missions in Northeast Alabama and North Georgia"

Carol Ann Vaughn (Auburn History Ph.D., 1998) wrote her dissertation, "'Living in the Lives of Men': A Southern Baptist Woman's Missionary Journey from Alabama to Shandong, 1830-1909," under the direction of Professor J. Wayne Flynt, adviser. Her M.A. thesis, defended in 1994, addressed "The Early Life of Martha Foster Crawford in Antebellum Alabama, 1830-1851."

She currently serves as Assistant Professor of Women and Leadership Studies and Director of the Christian Women's Leadership Center at Samford University.

MA 1994 "The Early Life of Martha Foster Crawford in Antebellum Alabama, 1830-1851"
PhD 1998 "Living in the Lives of Men': A Southern Baptist Woman's Missionary Journey from Alabama to Shandong, 1830-1909"

MA 1992 "Though the Heavens Fall': Liberal Theology and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1894-1925"

MA 1993 "Gatun: William L. Sibert and the Atlantic Division of the Panama Canal"
PhD 1999 "In Dens and Caves: The Survival of Anglicanism During the Rule of the Saints, 1640-1660"