Rate My Professor James Maddex

James Maddex is Professor Emeritus in the History Department at the University of Oregon, where he joined the faculty in 1966. He earned a B.A. from Princeton University in 1963 and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1966. Maddex's research centers on nineteenth-century American history, focusing on the American South in the antebellum and Reconstruction periods. His stated research interests encompass the transformations of Southern Presbyterianism from 1837 to 1889, including proslavery discipleship and its aftermath, as well as the participation of former Confederate leaders in national politics from 1870 to 1890.

Maddex's publications address key themes in Reconstruction politics and Southern religious thought. In The Virginia Conservatives, 1867-1879: A Study in Reconstruction Politics (University of North Carolina Press, 1970), he examines the political maneuvers and impact of conservative factions in Virginia following the Civil War. His book The Reconstruction of Edward A. Pollard: A Rebel's Conversion to Postbellum Unionism (University of North Carolina Press, 1974) traces the shift in perspective of a prominent Confederate editor toward postwar Unionism. Additionally, the article 'Proslavery Millennialism: Social Eschatology in Antebellum Southern Calvinism,' published in American Quarterly in 1979, explores eschatological dimensions of proslavery theology among Southern Calvinists. The Jack P. Maddex papers, held in the University of Oregon Special Collections and University Archives, include materials on socialism from the International Socialists organization spanning 1966 to 1974.