Office Hours
By Appointment
Education
PhD, University of Tennessee
BA, University of Massachusetts-Boston
About Me
Jennifer Brooks received her PhD in History from the University of Tennessee in 1997, arriving as an Associate Professor in the Auburn History Department in 2006. Currently, she is Professor of History and the Director of Graduate Studies. Her first book, Defining the Peace: World War Two Veterans, Race, and the Remaking of Southern Political Tradition (University of North Carolina Press, 2004), examined the multi-faceted and outsized impact of black and white World War II veterans in postwar southern politics. Her second book, Resident Strangers: Immigrant Laborers in New South Alabama (Louisiana State University Press, 2022), restores immigrant laborers to the construction of the New South project, particularly considering their experiences in Alabama’s railroads, mines, hand laundries, and the convict lease system. Other work has appeared in the Journal of Southern History, Labor: Studies in Working Class History, Journal of American Ethnic History, and Southern Cultures. She is a past president of the Southern Labor Studies Association and currently is working on a graphic history of the 1950 American Enka strike in Tennessee, entitled Striking Out: A Graphic History of Southern Labor during the Cold War, using original photographs of the strike and her own interviews of strike participants.
Dr. Brooks welcomes graduate students interested in working on topics in southern and US labor and immigration history, the home front history of World War II, and the postwar 1940s-1950s.
Research Interests
20th-century South
Publications
Books
Defining the Peace: Race, World War Two Veterans, and the Remaking of Southern Political Tradition (University of North Carolina Press, 2004).