David E. Goldberg, GTA
dgoldbe1@mix.wvu.edu
Ph.D. Student, Graduate Teaching Assistant
G13 Woodburn Hall, 304-293-2421×5245
M.A. in History, Villanova University, 2007
B.A. in History, Elizabethtown College (PA), 2005
Advisor: Peter Carmichael
Major Field: Nineteenth Century U.S. History; Civil War and Reconstruction
Other Fields: African American History, British Imperialism/Atlantic World
Research Interests:
I am interested in the ways in which Reconstruction-era debates were remembered and contested by Northern citizens following emancipation. Whereas previous scholarship has often confined its scope to southern communities or to Northern electoral politics, my research focuses instead on the reconstruction of Northern society after the Civil War and the consequences it posed for African Americans seeking equal access to public and commercial space. In particular, I am concerned with those Northern citizens who visited New Jersey’s shore communities during the late nineteenth century and the both vocal and physical battles they waged with African American tourists, seasonal workers, and residents who fought for integrated access to the beaches, boardwalks and commercial establishments that lined the region’s resort coastline. These experiences provide specific insight into the shifting postwar notions of race, leisure, and citizenship, as well as help re-locate the political and cultural origins of Jim Crow in the post-Civil War North.
