Dr. Jeremy Neely

Biography

Dr. Neely is an associate professor of history who has taught at Missouri State since 2010. At MSU he has taught courses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Civil War in Missouri, U. S. military history, Civil War memory, the history of the American West, both halves of the U. S. history survey, graduate readings and research seminars, and the department's sophomore-level historical research and writing course.

His most recent book, A Union Tested: The Civil War Letters of Cimbaline and Henry Fike (University of Georgia Press, 2024), follows a Unionist couple in Illinois whose wartime correspondence exemplified the wartime struggles of ordinary Americans.His first book, The Border between Them: Violence and Reconciliation on the Kansas-Missouri Line (University of Missouri Press, 2007), considers many of the major themes that transformed the trans-Mississippi West across the nineteenth century. A decade-long guerrilla war over slavery and secession is the pivotal event of that study, and most of his work since that project has been grounded in the Civil War era. Other recent publications have examined the intersections of the partisan press and the Union army's anti-guerrilla policy; the popular politics of urban development; and the ways that Americans wrestled with memories of wartime atrocities.

Details

Education

• PhD, History, 2004, University of Missouri-Columbia

Teaching

• History 121: History of the United States to 1877
• History 315: Military History of the United States
• History 524/64: Civil War and Reconstruction
• History 720: American History Readings Seminar
• History 723: Readings Seminar on the American Civil War
• History 730: Research Seminar in American History
• History 785: Primary Source Seminar on the Civil War in Missouri

Professional experience

Selected publications

A Union Tested: The Civil War Letters of Cimbaline and Henry Fike (University of Georgia Press, 2024)

The Border between Them: Violence and Reconciliation on the Kansas-Missouri Line (University of Missouri Press, 2007)

Research and professional interests

• The Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi West
• Reconstruction
• Civil War Memory
• Guerrilla Warfare

Awards and honors

• Summer Research Fellowship, Missouri State University, 2020
• William E. Foley Research Fellowship, Missouri State Archives, 2020
• Diversity Scholar Award, Faculty Center on Teaching and Learning, 2019
• Curtis P. Lawrence Master Teacher Award, Missouri State University Honors College, 2016
• Distinguished Dissertation Award, University of Missouri, 2005
• Phi Beta Kappa, 1998

Areas of Expertise

Media Appearances