Andrew Moore
Ph.D. History
“Studying history is really about studying identity. If you don’t know your history, it’s the equivalent of waking up every morning and having no memory of what happened to you before that moment. And without that memory, or knowledge, how do you know who you are?”
How long have you been at Saint Anselm, and what brought you here?
I started here in 2003. … My wife and I and our oldest child moved here from Tennessee. I arrived thinking it would be for three years, and then I would return to the South. But I was offered a tenured-track position, and it was a great opportunity, and here I am 23 years and five more children later. There’s still a pull south, but I’ve come to really appreciate the Granite State.
What was your first experience with history? Meaning, was there a favorite family trip or story?
Not a specific trip or memory, but growing up I read a lot, mostly biographies of famous people. I was always interested in reading stories about the past, and about people from the past.
So when did you become interested in studying history?
In high school, I didn’t have a great experience with the subject—it was a lot of date memorization. But in college, I learned how to research and spent time in the local archives, and I found it very interesting. My first college research project was on the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s—my professor told me the local [East Knoxville, Tenn.] archives had original papers from the Klan. In these papers, Klan members talked about their perception of what Americanism was. For me, being raised a Christian, their use of Christianity to define the American experience didn’t match my American experience. That’s why studying history is really about studying identity. If you don’t know your history, it’s the equivalent of waking up every morning and having no memory of what happened to you before that moment. And without that memory, or knowledge, how do you know who you are?
Did that experience also inspire your current focus on the religious, racial, and political history of the 20th-century American South?
I went to graduate school thinking I might be interested in studying Native American history, but I soon realized this wasn’t what I was really interested in. I continued thinking about identity and history, and I’m a Southerner, and that’s really what I’m a part of—that’s what I know. I completed my master’s thesis on Southern Baptists during the 1920s, and in applying for my doctoral program, I had read the works of Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy— both Catholic writers from the South. To me, that was interesting. They’re very Southern, but with a Catholic mindset and culture. It made me wonder, ‘What’s the history of that? Catholics in the South, how did these people who were outsiders religiously, what was their experience in this culture that was overwhelmingly Protestant?’
This is a big year for U.S. history as our country celebrates its 250th anniversary. What is something you want your students to know about our past?
The history of the United States is far more complex and nuanced than a lot of people want to acknowledge. Our history is based on, and has been driven by, a certain set of ideals that are worth celebrating. But that doesn’t mean we cannot also acknowledge that most of those early men were enslavers, and slavery drove economic prosperity for hundreds of years. We must acknowledge that.
If you could be part of one period in history, when would you choose?
I think it would be interesting to go back to first-century Palestine, and be among the people who walked with Jesus. But in U.S. history, probably the early 1960s. There was a feeling of optimism and unity, political parties were not so divided, and there was a feeling of ‘we can fix our problems.’
Photo by Kevin Harkins