Rate My Professor Edward Blum

Edward J. Blum is a professor of nineteenth-century United States History in the History Department at San Diego State University. He received his B.A. in History from the University of Michigan in 1999, his M.A. in History from the University of Kentucky in 2001, and his Ph.D. in History from the University of Kentucky in 2003. His research, writing, and teaching involve politics, constitutionalism, war, society, and culture in the United States from the founding of the nation through the era of the Civil War. He has particular interests in how numerical information, data, demography, statistics, and the Census play roles in shaping the course of United States history. Blum teaches courses covering the Civil War and Reconstruction, American religious history, and history through biography, engaging students with music, images, debates, and historical simulations.

Blum is the author and co-author of several books, including War is All Hell: The Nature of Evil and the Civil War (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021, with John Matsui), The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (University of North Carolina Press, 2012, with Paul Harvey), W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), and Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898 (Louisiana State University Press, 2005; reissued 2015). He has edited Major Problems in American History (Cengage Learning, 2017, with Elizabeth Cobbs), The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History (Columbia University Press, 2012, with Paul Harvey), The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois: New Essays and Reflections (Mercer University Press, 2009, with Jason R. Young), and Vale of Tears: New Essays in Religion and Reconstruction (Mercer University Press, 2005, with W. Scott Poole). His articles include “ ‘The First Secessionist Was Satan’: Secession and the Politics of Evil in Civil War America” in Civil War History (2014) and “The Crucible of Disease: Trauma, Memory, and National Reconciliation during the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878” in The Journal of Southern History (2003). Blum has won the C. Vann Woodward Prize from the Southern Historical Association, the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship, the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities, and the John T. Hubbell Prize for best article in Civil War History in 2015. He has authored pieces for the New York Times, CNN, The Atlantic Monthly, Newsweek, and other outlets. As Project Director for the American Revolution and Constitution History Project at SDSU, he energizes civic and patriotic reflection in San Diego.