Department of History

A native of Virginia, Ken Noe received his PhD from the University of Illinois and taught at West Georgia College for ten years before coming to Auburn in 2000. His major teaching and research areas are the American Civil War and Appalachian history. He is the author or editor of five books: Politics and Culture of the Civil War Era: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Johannsen, co-edited with Daniel J. McDonough (Seligsgrove, Pa., 2006); Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle (Lexington, 2002); The Civil War in Appalachia: Collected Essays, co-edited with Shannon H. Wilson (Knoxville, 1997); A Southern Boy in Blue: The Memoir of Marcus Woodcock, 9th Kentucky Infantry (U.S.A.) (Knoxville, 1996); and Southwest Virginia's Railroad: Modernization and the Sectional Crisis (Urbana, 1994; paperback ed., Tuscaloosa, 2003). He has just completed a new book manuscript on Confederate soldiers who enlisted after 1861. He also has written many articles and essays, most recently in Civil War History and The Journal of Military History. He is a Pulitzer Prize nominee and the winner of the 2003 Kentucky Governor's Award, the 2002 Peter Seaborg Book Award for Civil War Non-fiction, and the 1997 Tennessee History Book Award, as well as several teaching awards.

Dr. Noe is a frequent speaker on the Civil War Round Table circuit, and a participant in the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship Program. He was the 2008-2009 president of the Alabama Historical Association.

• 1990 PhD, University of Illinois
• 1983 MSLS, University of Kentucky
• 1981 MA, Virginia Tech
• 1979 BA, Emory & Henry

Books

• Politics and Culture of the Civil War Era: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Johannsen, edited by Kenneth W. Noe and Daniel J. McDonough (Seligsgrove, Pa., 2006)
• Southwest Virginia's Railroad: Modernization and the Sectional Crisis (Urbana, 1994; paperback ed., Tuscaloosa, 2003)
• Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle (Lexington, 2002)
• The Civil War in Appalachia: Collected Essays, edited by Kenneth W. Noe and Shannon H. Wilson (Knoxville, 1997)
• A Southern Boy in Blue: The Memoir of Marcus Woodcock, 9th Kentucky Infantry (U.S.A.) (Knoxville, 1996)

Articles

• "'Damned North Carolinians' and 'Brave Virginians': The Lane-Mahone Controversy, Honor, and Civil War Memory," Journal of Military History 72 (October 2008): 1089-1115
• "'Somebody Blundered': Marcus Woodcock, Ambrose Bierce, and 'The Crime at Pickett's Mill'," Ambrose Bierce Project Journal 3 (Fall 2007) http://www.ambrosebierce.org/journal3noe.html
• "Jigsaw Puzzles, Mosaics, and Civil War Battle Narratives," Civil War History 53 (September 2007): 236-43
• "The Fighting Chaplain of Shiloh: Isaac Tichenor's Civil War and the Roles of Confederate Ministers," in McDonough and Noe, Politics and Culture, 240-64
• "Who Were the Bushwhackers: Age, Class, Kin, and Western Virginia's Confederate Guerrillas, 1861-62," Civil War History 49 (Mar. 2003): 5-31
• "Last Stand Ridge: The Other High Water Mark," North & South 4 (Sept. 2001): 64-77
• "Appalachia Before Mr. Peabody: Some Recent Literature on the Southern Mountain Region," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 110 (2002): 5-34
• "'A Source of Great Economy?': The Railroad and Slavery's Expansion in Southwest Virginia, 1850-1860," in John C. Inscoe, ed., Appalachians and Race: The Mountain South From Slavery to Segregation (University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 101-15
• "'Grand Havoc': The Climactic Battle of Perryville," in Kent Masterson Brown, ed., The Civil War in Kentucky: Battle for the Bluegrass State (Savas, 2000), 175-220
• "'Coming to Us Dead': A Civil War Casualty and His Estate," Journal of Illinois History 2 (Winter 1999): 289-304
• "'Deadened Color and Colder Horror': Rebecca Harding Davis and the Myth of Unionist Appalachia," in Dwight B. Billings, Gurney Norman, and Katherine Ledford, eds., Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes: Back Talk from an American Region (University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 67-84
• "'Exterminating Savages': The Union Army and Mountain Guerrillas in Southern West Virginia, 1861-1862," in Noe and Wilson, Civil War in Appalachia, 104-30
• "Toward the Myth of Unionist Appalachia, 1865-1883," Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association 6 (1994): 73-80
• "'The Conservative': A Civil War Soldier's Musical Condemnation of Illinois Copperheads," Illinois Historical Journal 84 (Winter 1991): 268-72
• "Red String Scare: Southwest Virginia and the Heroes of America," North Carolina Historical Review 69 (July 1992): 301-22
• "Appalachia's Civil War Genesis: Southwest Virginia as Depicted by Northern and European Writers, 1825-1865," West Virginia History 50 (1991): 91-108
• "Connie Mack Comes to Martinsville," West Georgia College Review 21 (1991): 56-61
• "Southwest Virginia's Iron Road to Secession," Appalachian Heritage 17 (Spring 1991): 31-35
• "The Vision and the Reality: A History of KDLA," Kentucky Libraries 49 (Winter 1985): 2-8

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