Selected Publications

Books

Klansville, U.S.A.: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan (Oxford University Press, 2013).

There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence (University of California Press, 2004).

Edited Journal Issues

“Legacies of Racial Violence: Clarifying and Addressing the Presence of the Past.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 694 (with Hedwig Lee and Geoff Ward, 2021).

“Legacies of Racial Conflict and Violence.” Race and Justice 4, 4 (with Geoff Ward, 2015).

Articles and Chapters

“Montgomery’s Monumental Truths.” Contexts (with Christina Simko, 2023). 

“Contesting Commemorative Landscapes: Confederate Monuments and Trajectories of Change.” Social Problems (with Christina Simko and Nicole Fox, 2022).

“Transitional Justice in Public and Private: Truth Commission Narratives in Greensboro.” International Journal of Transitional Justice (with Nicole Fox, 2022).

Introduction to “Legacies of Racial Violence: Clarifying and Addressing the Presence of the Past.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 694 (with Hedwig Lee and Geoff Ward, 2021).

“Exculpating Injustice: Coroner Constructions of White Innocence in the Postbellum South.” Socius (with Sarah Gaby, Hedwig Lee, Geoff Ward, and Ashley Jackson, 2021).

“(Dis)continuities in Racialized Legal Violence.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (with Geoff Ward, Hedwig Lee, and Sarah Gaby, 2021).

“White Health Benefits of Histories of Enslavement: The Case of Opioid Deaths.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (with Ryan Gabriel, Michael Esposito, Geoff Ward, Hedwig Lee, and Margaret Hicken, 2021.).

“Enforcement Networks and Racial Contention in Civil Rights-Era Mississippi.” In Ruling by Other Means, edited by Grzegorz Ekiert, Elizabeth Perry, and Xiaojun Yan. Cambridge University Press (with Peter Owens, 2020).

“Configuring Political Repression: Anti-Civil Rights Enforcement in Mississippi.” Mobilization (with Geoff Ward and Peter Owens, 2019).

“Race, Ethnicity, and Social Movements.” Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Social Movements (with Peter B. Owens and Rory McVeigh, 2018).

“Differentiating Hate: Threat and Opportunity as Drivers of Organization vs. Action.” Sociological Research Online (Rapid Response issue on “Contemporary Countermovements in the Age of Populism,” 2018).

 
 
“Assessing Learning in a Sociology Department: What Do Students Say That They Learn?” Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education (with Julia Bandini, Sara Shostak, and Wendy Cadge, 2016).
 
 
“Infiltrators.” In Breaking Down the State: Protestors Engaged, edited by Jan Willem Duyvendak and James M. Jasper. Amsterdam University Press (with Roberto Soto-Carrion, 2015).
 
“What is the KKK a Case Of?: Extreme Cases as Analytic Device.” Sociology Compass 9, 4: 299-308 (with Rachel S. Madsen, 2015).
 
 
 
“Civil Rights.” Oxford Bibliographies in Sociology. Ed. Jeff Manza. New York: Oxford University Press (with Nicole Fox, 2013).
 
“Shades of Anti-Civil Rights Violence: Reconsidering the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi.” Pgs. 180-203 in The Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, edited by Ted Ownby. University Press of Mississippi (2013).
 
“Mobilizing Ethnic Competition.” Theory and Society 41, 5: 505-525 (2012).
 
 
“Methods of Truth and Reconciliation.” Pgs. 163-167 in Sociologists in Action, edited by Kathleen Odell Korgen, Jonathan M. White, and Shelley K. White. Pine Forge Press (2011).
 
“The Durability of Collective Memory: Reconciling the ‘Greensboro Massacre.’” Social Forces 88, 4: 1517-1542 (with Colleen Nugent and Caitlin Slodden, 2010).
 
“Teaching Graduate and Undergraduate Research Methods: A Multi-Pronged Departmental Initiative.” Teaching Sociology 38, 2: 93-105 (with Sara Shostak, Jennifer Girouard, and Wendy Cadge, 2010).
 
“Ambivalence and Control: State Action Against the Civil Rights-era Ku Klux Klan.” Qualitative Sociology 32, 4: 355-377 (2009).
 
“Truth, Reconciliation, and the Ku Klux Klan.” Southern Cultures 14, 3: 68-87 (2008).
 
“Contexts for Mobilization: Spatial Settings and Klan Presence in North Carolina, 1964-1966.” American Journal of Sociology 113, 3: 781-814 (with Benjamin T. Phillips, 2007).
 
“‘What If She’s From the FBI?’ The Effects of Covert Social Control on Social Movements and their Participants.” In Mathieu DeFlem, ed., Surveillance and Governance: Crime Control and Beyond. Elsevier Press (with John Noakes, 2007).
 
“Paths to Participation: A Profile of the Civil Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan.” Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change 27: 283-309 (2007).
 
“Surveillance and Social Movements: Lenses on the Repression-Mobilization Nexus.” Contemporary Sociology 36, 2:120-125 (2007).
 
“Comparative Collective Community-Based Learning: The ‘Possibilities for Change in American Communities’ Program.” Teaching Sociology 32: 276-290 (with Cheryl Kingma-Kiekhofer, 2004).
 
“The Emergence of ‘Worthy’ Targets: Official Frames and Deviance Narratives within the FBI.” Sociological Forum 19, 3: 347-369 (with Barb Browning, 2004).
 
 
 
 
“American Sociological Association Elections, 1975-1996: Exploring Explanations for ‘Feminization’.” American Sociological Review 62: 746-759 (with Rachel A. Rosenfeld and Kathryn Schmidt, 1997).

Other Essays

“Extremism’s Mainstream Appeal” (Podcast review of Slow Burn: David Duke). 2022. American Historical Review.

“What the policing response to the KKK in the 1960s can teach about dismantling white supremacist groups today.” 2021. The Conversation.

“See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Police No Evil,” with Jennifer Earl. 2021. Lawfare.

“Monuments Lost and Found in St. Louis,” with Alia Nahra. 2020. Monument Lab/Pulitzer Arts Foundation Public Iconographies Project.

“The Maniacal Persistence of White Power Armies in the United States” (Review of Kathleen Belew’s Bring the War Home). 2020. The Common Reader.

“Structural Racism is Killing US,” with Hedwig Lee and Savannah Larimore. 2020. Harris Institute Gun Violence and Human Rights Initiative Blog.

“It Shouldn’t Be a Surprise That African Americans are Dying in St. Louis,” with Hedwig Lee, Geoff Ward, and Sarah Gaby. 2020. St. Louis Post-Dispatch (15 April).

Review of Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman. 2019. The Journal of American History.

“The Virtual and Real Worlds of White Nationalism.” 2018. The Common Reader.

“A Long View on the Alt-Right’s Doomed Emergence from the Shadows.”  2017. Mobilizing Ideas Essay Dialogue: The Alt-Right.

“Five Myths About the Ku Klux Klan.” 2016. Washington Post.

 
“Top 5 Questions About the KKK.” 2015. PBS American Experience Online.
 
“Local Rules: Institutional Bases for Challenging Segregation in the Civil Rights-Era South.” 2014. Mobilizing Ideas Essay Dialogue: Origins of the Civil Rights Movement.
 
“Heterodoxy, Insulation, and the Production of Racist Violence.” 2013. Mobilizing Ideas Essay Dialogue: Right-Wing Extremism, Racist Movements, and Fights for Racial Justice.
 
 
“Hit and Miss: Making Connections in the Social Movements Classroom.” 2012. Mobilizing Ideas Essay Dialogue: Pedagogy of Social Movements.
 
“Mississippi Smoldering,” with Yosep Bae, Jesse Begelfer, Edwin Gonzalez, Gabi Sanchez-Stern, Molly Schneider, and Jake Weiner. 2011. Brandeis Magazine.
 
“All the Klan’s Men.” 2005. Boston Globe Sunday Ideas.
 
“What the G-Men Knew.” 2004. New York Times Magazine.