Associate Professor
Education
Ph.D., History, Yale University, 2013
M.Phil., History, Yale University, 2012
M.A. History, Yale University, 2012
B.A., History/Civil War Studies, Gettysburg College, 2009
Biography
Dr. Jordan is associate professor of history and chair of the Department of History at Sam Houston State University, where he teaches courses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, American military history, and the U.S. history survey. A cultural historian of the nation’s fratricidal conflict, he is interested in the human longitude of the Civil War battles and the problem of memory. Dr. Jordan is the author of Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2015), a narrative history of the men who won the war but couldn’t bear the peace. The book was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in History and, in its dissertation form, won the George Washington Egleston Prize (for best U.S. history dissertation at Yale) and Yale’s John Addison Porter Prize. In 2020, he co-edited The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans (Louisiana State University Press). A Thousand May Fall: An Immigrant Regiment's Civil War, followed in 2021; it earned a starred review from Publisher's Weekly. A volume co-edited with the Lincoln scholar Jonathan White, Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves, is due out with the University of Georgia Press in 2023. Liveright/W.W. Norton plans to publish his major interpretive synthesis of the Civil War era in 2025. A native of Akron, Ohio, Dr. Jordan serves as the Book Review Editor for The Civil War Monitor and is a member of the Society of Civil War Historians. He is the founding co-editor of the Veterans Book Series (University of Massachusetts Press). His more than 100 articles, reviews, or essays have appeared in The Journal of the Civil War Era, Civil War History, and The New York Times.
Courses
Undergraduate:
HIST 1301 U.S. History to 1876
HIST 1302 U.S. History sn 1876
HIST 3372 Historiography
HIST 3380 American Civil War and Reconstruction
HIST 3386 American Military History
HIST 4399 Senior Seminar
Graduate:
Selected Publications
Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves, co-edited with Jonathan W. White (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2023).
"Foreword," in Chris Mackowski and Jonathan Tracey, eds., The Civil War and Pop Culture (California: Savas Beatie, 2023), xvi-xxxi.
"Forum on Eric Foner's 'The Causes of the American Civil War: Recent Interpretations and New Directions,'" (with Judith Giesberg, Kellie Carter Jackson, Martha S. Jones, James Oakes, Jason Phillips, Angela M. Riotto, Anne Sarah Rubin, Manisha Sinha) Civil War History 69, no. 2 (June 2023): 60-86.
"'Has He Not Been in the Service of His Country?' Union Regimental Mascots in War and Peace," in Earl J. Hess, ed., Animal Histories of the Civil War Era (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2022).
"Grand Old Men: The Last Veterans and Civil War Memory in the Twentieth Century," in Jonathan Tracey and Chris Mackowski, eds., Civil War Monuments and Memory: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War (California: Savas Beatie, 2022), 255-263.
"What If Lincoln Had Lived? The Civil War's Perennial Counterfactual Question" (with Evan C. Rothera) in Chris Mackowski and Brian Matthew Jordan, eds., The Great What Ifs of the American Civil War: Historians Tackle the Conflict's Most Intriguing Possibilities (California: Savas Beatie, 2022).
A Thousand May Fall: An Immigrant Regiment's Civil War (NewYork: Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2021).
"Foreword," in Vincent Burns, Voices of the Army of the Potomac: Personal Reminiscences of Union Veterans (Philadelphia: Casemate, 2021).
"Band of Brothers: How One Regiment Grappled with the Death and Suffering of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg," The Civil War Monitor 11, no. 2 (Summer 2021): 36-47, 66.
“What I Saw Would Make You Sick: Union Soldiers Confront the Dead of Antietam,” in Charles Mitchell and Jean H. Baker, eds., The Civil War in Maryland Reconsidered (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2021).
“Benjamin F. Butler, Ex Parte Milligan, and the Meaning of the Civil War,” in Stewart Winger and Jonathan W. White, eds., Ex Parte Milligan Reconsidered: Race and Civil Liberties from the Lincoln Administration to the War on Terror (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2020).
“‘No, Will, He Just Died’: The Abandonment of Triumphalism in Recent Civil War Films,” in Martial Culture, Silver Screen, ed. Matthew C. Hulbert and Matthew Stanley (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020).
“‘The Work Is Not Finished’: Some New Directions for Research on Civil War Veterans,” in The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans, ed. Brian Matthew Jordan and Evan C. Rothera (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020).
“Introduction” (with Evan C. Rothera) in The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans, ed. Brian Matthew Jordan and Evan C. Rothera (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020).
“Building the Perfect Army," The Civil War Monitor 8, no. 3 (Fall 2018): 30-43.
“The Hour That Lasted Fifty Years: The 107th Ohio and the Human Longitude of the Battle of Gettysburg,” in Andrew F. Lang and Andrew Bledsoe, eds., Upon the Fields of Battle: Essays on the Military History of America’s Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2018).
“Sortir d’une guerre civile: le cas de la guerre civile américaine,” in Bruno Cabanes et al., eds., Historie de Guerre (Paris, France: Le Seuil, 2018).
“A [Suppressed] Ballot is Stronger Than the Bullet,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 38, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 87-91.
“The Unfortunate Colonel,” The Civil War Monitor 6, no. 4 (Winter 2016): 54-63, 74-76.
“The Day Soldiers Honored Fallen Comrades,” The Daily Beast, May 30, 2016.
“‘Our Work is Not Yet Finished’: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War, 1865-1872,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 5, no. 4 (December 2015): 484-503.
Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War (New York: Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2015). Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
“‘Remembrance will cling to us through life’: Kate Bushman’s Memoir of the Battle of Gettysburg,” Adams County History 20 (Fall 2014): 4-21.
“When the Soldiers Went Home,” New York Times, April 24, 2015.
On August 21st-22nd, 2024, Dr. Brian Jordan, Chair of the History Department, was given the significant honor of delivering the keynote eulogy for the Missing in America Project. This initiative is dedicated to the location, identification, and interment of the unclaimed cremated remains of American veterans, accomplished through the collaborative efforts of private, state, and federal organizations. The primary objective of the MIA Project is to pay homage and reverence to those who have bravely served our nation by ensuring a final resting place for these forgotten heroes.
Following the aftermath of the Civil War, a considerable number of veterans made their way to Seattle. After their passing, many were cremated, and for various reasons, their remains were left unclaimed in funeral homes for an astonishing 100 years. Upon the discovery of the remains of thirty Union Veterans and twenty-eight spouses, Dr. Brian Jordan was not only invited to deliver the keynote eulogy for the mass funeral but also played a pivotal role in facilitating the transportation of the remains from the funeral home to Tahoma National Cemetery for inurnment.
Dr. Jordan's profound knowledge of Civil War history and his extensive body of published works, including the first comprehensive history about Union veterans' transition to civilian life after the war, led to his participation in this event.
His reflections on the experience are genuinely touching. "I had no real idea what to expect and what emotions to feel. It was the most overwhelming thing I've ever done. To see the remains, hold them, and be responsible for speaking for them. Playing a small part in that is incredibly humbling. I feel a deep sense of responsibility and a sense of duty to tell their stories.