Kristofer Ray

Senior Editor, Tennessee Historical Quarterly

Associate Professor of Early American History

rayk@apsu.edu

http://www.tennesseehistory.org/ContributeAnArticle.htm

Education:

PhD University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2003

BA Baylor University, 1994

Research Interests:

My scholarly interests concentrate on North America within the context of the Atlantic World, with attention to issues of identity formation, political culture, and Indian-European interaction.  I particularly focus on the 17^th and 18^th century South, whether through iconic (and controversial) figures or through regional conditions more generally.  In the last few years, for example, I have presented several papers on Thomas Jefferson’s political economy.  I have also helped edit four volumes of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, and have written an essay titled “Thomas Jefferson and A Summary View of the Rights of British North America” for Francis Cogliano, ed., A Companion to Thomas Jefferson (Blackwell Press, 2011).  An essay I have written titled "The Political Sage of Monticello: Thomas Jefferson, William Duane, and the Fate of the Republican Cause, 1809-1815" is forthcoming at American Nineteenth Century History. 

 More broadly, I am deeply engaged in investigating the ways in which British North Americans projected imperial interests into the “Tennessee” region of the trans-Appalachian South, circa 1670 to 1800.  I find that the Indian slave trade, combined with the fear of Catholic France and Spain, fueled British efforts to ally with Chickasaws, Creeks, and particularly Cherokees.  These alliances in turn catalyzed the Spanish and French to solidify their own Indian connections, which touched off a complex process of Indian-European contestation along an “imperial corridor” stretching from the Tennessee River in the east to the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers in the west.  The corridor became an avenue through which these groups projected (both literally and in terms of imagined action) towards the Wabash, the Ohio Valley, and the Illinois Country.  The commercial, diplomatic, and ideological complexities established there would continue long after the demise of the slave trade, and would influence the way in which Euro-Americans thought about sovereignty and jurisdictional control in the Revolutionary era. 

 In short, my research focuses on the local—a re-imagining of Tennessee history in the long 18^th century—in order to understand the trans-Appalachian South’s place in North America and the Atlantic World.  

Recent Courses Taught:

Colonial America

Revolutionary America

The South in the Atlantic World, 1540-1763

Indians, Europeans, and Empire in North America, 1670-1763

Readings on the Southern Revolutionary Experience, 1754-1800

The Trans-Appalachian West in the Age of Revolutions, 1754-1815

Selected Publications:

Middle Tennessee, 1775-1825: Progress and Popular Democracy on the Southwestern Frontier (University of Tennessee Press, 2007)

Editor, Before the Volunteer State: New Thoughts on Early Tennessee History, 1540-1800 (Under contract at the University of Tennessee Press)

“Cherokees and Empire in the British Imagination, 1690-1750,” in Ray, ed., Before The Volunteer State (forthcoming)

"Cherokees and Franco-British Confrontation in the Tennessee Corridor, 1748-1758" Native South (forthcoming)

“Leadership and Sovereignty in the Revolutionary American Southwest: The State of Franklin as Case Study,” in Glenn Crothers and Kevin Barksdale, eds., Secessions: From the Revolution to the Civil War (Ohio University Press, forthcoming)

"The Political Sage of Monticello: Thomas Jefferson, William Duane, and the Fate of the Republican Cause, 1809-1815" American Nineteenth Century History (forthcoming)

“Thomas Jefferson and A Summary View of the Rights of British North America,” in Francis Cogliano, ed., A Companion to Thomas Jefferson (Blackwell Publishing, 2011)

“New Directions in Early Tennessee History, 1540-1815” Tennessee Historical Quarterly Vol. 68, #3 (Fall 2010)

“Political Culture and the Origins of a Party System in the Southern Ohio Valley: The Case of Early National Tennessee, 1796-1812,” Ohio Valley History Vol. 4, #4 (Winter 2004)

 “Land Speculation, Popular Democracy and Political Transformation on the Tennessee Frontier, 1780-1800,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly Vol. 61, #3 (Fall 2002)

 Assistant Editor, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, Volume 5: May 1812-March 1813 (Princeton University Press, 2009)

Assistant Editor, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, Volume 3: August 1810-June 1811 (Princeton University Press, 2006)

Assistant Editor, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, Volume 2: November 1809-August 1810 (Princeton University Press, 2005)

Book Reviews in The Journal of Early American History, The Journal of Southern History, Ethnohistory, Florida Historical Quarterly, Georgia Historical Quarterly, Ohio Valley History, Agricultural History, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Southern Cultures, and Presidential Studies Quarterly