Professor uses fellowship to enhance study of Southern soldiers

Published: May 23, 2011

By Taylor Reeves

CLEMSON — A Clemson University historian is exploring the role of Southern soldiers in the Mexican-American war. Rachel Moore, assistant professor of history, was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Teaching Development Fellowship for the fall 2011 semester.

This fellowship will be used to develop her history methodology class into a study of the soldiers. The course will culminate in a documentary produced by Clemson’s communications department, as well as a conference held on campus.

Teaching Development Fellowships awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities aim to improve the quality of humanities education in the United States by strengthening the link between research and teaching. The fellowships are intended to enhance an existing undergraduate course related to an instructor’s core research interests.

Moore specializes in the history of Mexico and her interests include the postal system in Mexico, the impact of infrastructure on society, print culture and the Atlantic world. Her latest book, "Forty Miles from the Sea: Xalapa, the Public Sphere and the Atlantic World in Nineteenth-Century Mexico," examines the relationships that bound the Mexican cities of Xalapa and Veracruz to the larger Atlantic world.

Moore has received a fellowship from the National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C., for her work on the history of postal workers in Mexico. She presented an essay on this topic entitled "From the Pulpit to the Post: Anti-clericalism and Communication in Orizaba, Mexico, 1857-1867” at the Postal History Symposium in 2009, and her presentation later was published by the Smithsonian University Press in a collection of essays released in 2010.

She is at work on a history of postal workers, communication and corruption in Mexico and the Mexican-American War study.

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