Harold S. Wilson, Associate Professor, Ph.D. Emory University, 1966. Civil War, History of the South, and the History of Technology.

Harold Wilson has been a member of the Old Dominion University history department since 1966. A native of Bristol, Virginia, his academic background includes a B. A. from King College, an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University, and a Ph. D. from Emory University. He has published two books, has another work in progress, and has authored over two dozen scholarly articles.

Dr. Wilson’s specialties are Old South, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the history of technology, and the Progressive Era, which encompasses the period between 1850 and 1912 in American history. His most regular upper level courses have included Civil War and Reconstruction, The History of the Old and New South, American Technology, and Muckraking. He has offered a variety of graduate courses including ones on the Civil War in Virginia, the Diplomatic and Naval Aspects of the Civil War, Presidential Reconstruction, the Secession Movement of the1850s, and Radical Reconstruction.

At present Dr. Wilson’s research interests focus mainly on (a) the infra-structure of the Confederate war economy, (b) the naval aspects of the Civil War, especially on the high seas, (c) the impact of technology upon the slave society of the Old South, and (d) the economic characteristics of planter aristocracy. He believes in posing new questions to the historic past and using unconventional sources and methodologies to address them.