Madeleine Forrest

I am an Assistant Professor of American history at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas, studying with Dr. Daniel Sutherland.

I am a historian of the nineteenth century U.S. South and the Civil War. While my work includes military history, it also has a social and cultural focus: I am interested in how social institutions and communities, and cultural practices and values, respond under stress. I am interested in understanding how the war and its aftermath affected southerners at the local level. My research focuses on the community of Fauquier County, Virginia, a border area of unique dynamism and fluidity during the American Civil War.