Elaine Frantz (Parsons)
Biography
Elaine Frantz (Parsons) is a historian of violence, gender and race in the long Nineteenth Century. She is working on two scholarly projects: one on the history of policing in Pittsburgh, and one on Women's Christian Temperance Union President Frances Willard. She recently published a book on the Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War: Ku-Klux :The Birth of the Klan during Reconstruction (University of North Carolina Press, 2016). Her first book, Manhood Lost: Drunken Men and Redeeming Women in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002) explores how saloon violence shaped gender roles. She has published articles in journals including the Journal of American History, the Journal of Southern History, Reviews in American History and the Journal of Social History. She is currently writing a book about private and state violence in Pittsburgh. Her work has been featured in Slate magazine, Vox, Back Story radio, CSPAN and other popular media.
Frantz also actively collaborates with people who are incarcerated. She is a member of a the Elsinore Bennu Think Tank for Restorative Justice, and was part of a collective which edited and produced the book, Life Sentences: Writings from an American Prison (Belt Press, 2019). She is now collaborating with this group on future publications She also has taught an Inside-Out class at Trumbull Correctional Institution, and will be continuing to teach classes there.
Frantz has an active interest in digital history, especially Network Analysis. She is on the editorial board for the Journal of the History of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and American Nineteenth-Century History
Education
M. A. in History, Johns Hopkins University, May 1994
B. A. in Political and Social Thought, University of Virginia, May 1992
Publications
- Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan during Reconstruction (University of North Carolina Press, January 2016).
- Manhood Lost: Drunken Men and Redeeming Women in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
- “Infinite Space and Common Ground: The Humble Wisdom of Scholar-Allies†(co-authored with Norm Conti), Counter-Stories and Counter-Spaces: A Critical Race Analysis of Incarceration and Return to School (Lexington Books, 2017).
- “Pinkertons as Paramilitary,†in Anne Garland Mahler and Joshua Lund, Men with Guns: Cultures of Paramilitarism and the Modern Americas (Forthcoming 2018).
- “The Cultural Work of the Ku-Klux Klan in U.S. History Textbooks, 1883-2014,†in Carole Emberton and Bruce Baker, Remembering Reconstruction (LSU Press, 2017).
- “Borders and Fugitives,†Reviews in American History 45: 1 (April, 2017), 55-72
- “Klan Skepticism and Denial in Reconstruction-Era Public Discourse,†Journal of Southern History 77: 1 (2011), 53-90.
- "Midnight Rangers: The Costume and Performance of the Reconstruction-Era Ku Klux Klan,†Journal of American History (December, 2005): 811-836.
- "Risky Business: The Uncertain Boundaries of Manhood in the Midwestern Saloon," Journal of Social History (Winter, 2001): 283-307.