(Please note, while I use Madeleine Forrest in a professional setting, my legal name is Madeleine Forrest Ramsey.)

Ph.D. History, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, 2018
Dissertation Title: “The Cruel Consequences of War: Life in Fauquier County, Virginia, 1861-1863”
Advisor: Daniel E. Sutherland

M.A. History, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina, 2012
Thesis Title: “When the Rangers Came Home: Reconstructing Lives in Fauquier County, Virginia, 1865 – 1866”
Advisor: Paul Christopher Anderson

B.A. History and Religious Studies, Randolph-Macon College, Ashland, Virginia, 2009
With honors, Phi Beta Kappa, cum laude

Employment

Assistant Professor, Department of History, Virginia Military Institute, 2021 – Present

Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History, Virginia Military Institute, 2020-2021

Part-time Assistant Professor, Department of History, Randolph-Macon College, 2016 – 2020

Instructor of Record, Department of History, University of Arkansas, 2013 – 2016

Professional Service

Assistant Director, SMH Summer Seminar in Military History, 2025 – Present

Deputy Editor, The Journal of Military History, 2022 – Present

Fellow, Society for Military History Summer Seminar in Military History, 2024

Book Review Co-Editor, H-CivWar, 2018 – 2021

Education Assistant, Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier, 2019 – 2020

Conference Presentations

“This Debatable Land: Confederate Guerillas, Union Soldiers, and Life Under Occupation in Fauquier County, Virginia, 1863,” Northern Great Plains History Conference, Mankato, MN, September 2025 (via Zoom).

“Parched Earth and Crisped Trees: The Role of Weather in Fauquier County, Virginia during the American Civil War,” The Society of Military History Annual Conference, Mobile, AL, March 2025.

“Getting the Little Wars into the Books: A Roundtable on Civil War Era Community Studies,” Panel Organizer, The Society of Civil War Historians Biennial Conference, Raleigh, NC, June 2024.

“Civilians or Combatants?: Union Army Occupation in Northern Virginia, 1862,” The Virginia Forum, Shepherdstown, WV, April 2023.

“Redefining Loyalty: Pardon and Amnesty in post-war northern Virginia,” The Society of Civil War Historians Biennial Conference, Philadelphia, PA, June 2022.

“’More as Friends than Enemies’: Union Occupation of Northern Virginia, 1862,” The Southern Historical Association’s Annual Conference, New Orleans, LA (scheduled; actual Zoom), November 2021.

“A Restoration of Rights and Citizenship: Pardon and Amnesty in post-Civil War northern Virginia,” The Virginia Forum, Richmond, VA, September 2020.

“This Debatable Land: Life on the Civil War Border in Fauquier County, Virginia,” Conference on the Civil War, University of Mississippi Center for Civil War Research, Oxford, MS, September 2017.

“‘Our Country May Yet Be Redeemed’: Life in Fauquier County, Virginia, 1861-1865,” The Virginia Forum, Norfolk, VA, March 2017.

“The Cost of Allegiance: Mosby’s Rangers and the Civilians of Fauquier County, Virginia,” Ohio Valley History Conference, Cookeville, TN, October 2016.

“Battlefield or home front?  Life with Mosby’s Rangers in Fauquier County, Virginia,” Popular Culture and American Culture Association Annual Conference, Seattle, WA, March 2016.

“Life After War? Mosby’s Rangers and the Art of Drafting an Amnesty Application,” 36^th Annual Mid-America Conference on History, Fort Smith AR, September 2014.

Fellowships and Awards

Faculty Development Leave, VMI, 2026

Grant-in-Aid of Research, VMI, 2025-2026

Jackson-Hope Faculty Travel grants, VMI, 2020-2025

Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellowship, Virginia Museum of History & Culture, 2016, 2025    

Michael Schoenecke Travel Grant, American Culture Association, 2016 

Diane D. Blair Fellowship in Southern History, University of Arkansas, 2016

Doctoral Academy Fellowship, University of Arkansas, 2012-2016  

Book Reviews

Cecily Zander, The Army under Fire: The Politics of Antimilitarism in the Civil War Era (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2024), The American Historical Review, vol. 130, no. 3 (2025): 1455-1456, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhaf330.

Drew Swanson, A Man of Bad Reputation: The Murder of John Stephens and the Contested Landscape of North Carolina Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2023), The Journal of the Civil War Era, 14, no. 3 (2024).

William L. Barney, Rebels in the Making: The Secession Crisis and the Birth of the Confederacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), The Annals of Iowa, 80, no. 2 (2021): 168–169.

William Cooper, Approaching Civil War and Southern History (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2019),Journal of the Civil War Era, 10, no. 3 (2020).

Erik Mathisen, The Loyal Republic: Traitors, Slaves, and the Remaking of Citizenship in Civil War America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2018), Journal of Southern History, 85, no. 4 (2019).

Bloody Engagements: John R. Kelso’s Civil War. Christopher Grass, ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), Civil War History, 64, no. 3 (2018).

Louis P. Masur, Lincoln’s Last Speech: Wartime Reconstruction and the Crisis of Reunion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), Newsletter for the Society of Civil War Historians, Winter 2017.

Wallace Hettle, The Confederate Homefront: A History in Documents (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2017), The Civil War Monitor, Published online October 4, 2017. https://www.civilwarmonitor.com/book-shelf/hettle-the-confederate-homefront-2017

Anne Sarah Rubin, Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman’s March and American Memory (UNC Press, 2014), American Nineteenth Century History, Published online May 17, 2016. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14664658.2016.1175862

Jonathan White, Emancipation, The Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln (LSU Press, 2014), Civil War History, 61, no. 4 (2015).

Elizabeth Varon, Appomattox: Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), Essays in History, (2014).

William Connery, Civil War Northern Virginia 1861 (The History Press, 2011), The Civil War Monitor, Posted 3/10/2015

Professional Memberships

Phi Alpha Theta

Society of Civil War Historians

Southern Association of Women Historians

Southern Historical Association

Virginia Historical Society