Episode 71: Dr. Megan Kate Nelson: Author and U.S. historian Dr. Megan Kate Nelson and Brad take a deep dive into the cultural discussion happening about statues, placemaking, and the lens through which we view history. From history vacations with her family to graduating from Harvard, she’s spent her life learning, teaching, and now writing about the United States. Her book, The Three-Corned War, examines the Civil War and the American West through three different lenses: indigenous people, soldiers, and civilians.
But, the show isn’t all heavy. Brad and Megan talked about her father’s love of paper maps, her two-year teaching stint at a boarding school, and her mom winning the Better Homes & Garden living room of the year award.
About Dr. Megan Kate Nelson
Massachusetts. She earned her BA from Harvard University in History and Literature and her PhD from Iowa in American Studies. She was a professor of History and American Studies for 12 years before leaving academia to write full-time in 2014.
Her new book, The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West, was published by Scribner in February 2020. This project was the recipient of a 2017 NEH Public Scholar Award and a 2017 Filson Historical Society Fellowship.
Dr. Nelson is the author of two previous books: Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War (Georgia, 2012) and Trembling Earth: A Cultural History of the Okefenokee Swamp (Georgia, 2005). She has also written about the Civil War, the U.S. West, and American culture for The New York Times, Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, Preservation Magazine, and Civil War Times.
Her column on Civil War popular culture, “Stereoscope,” appears regularly in the Civil War Monitor.
