W. Scott Poole
Associate Professor
Office Hours: By appointment only
Phone: 843.953.4862
E-mail: poolews@cofc.edu
Scott Poole holds a Ph.D. in American history from University of Mississippi. His sixth book is entitled Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting. Appearing October 15, 2011, it analyzes American horror narratives in folk belief, religion, and popular culture from the colonial era to the present. The book examines how these narratives have intersected with topics in American history ranging from race to gender and sexuality.
Education
Ph.D. University of Mississippi.M.T.S. Harvard University
Research Interests
American folk and pop culture, South Carolina African American history, the Piedmont Blues
Courses Taught
Religion in American History
Monsters in America
South Carolina History
Religion in the Atlantic World
Survey courses focuses on the history of the idea of the Devil and modernity
Honors and Awards
Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting has been selected for the 2012 John W. Cawelti Award for the Best Textbook/Primer in popular and American Culture published in 2011.
Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry won the George C. Rogers Award for Best Book in South Carolina History, 2004.
Teaching American History Grant
The 2010 Historical Inguiry Project with Horry County Social Studies Teachers.
Focus on Faculty
"The Confederate "Lost Cause" is Not Lost to Historian"
S.C. Book Festival 2009
Jack Bass and Scott Poole note the release of their publication The Palmetto State: The Making of Modern South Carolina.
Publications
Scott Poole's sixth manuscript entitled Monsters in America:Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting, appearing October 15, 2011, Baylor University Press.
He is author of Satan in America: The Devil We Know, Rowman & Littlefield Publisher in 2009, and The Palmetto State: The Making of Modern South Carolina, USC Press in 2009.
He has written several previous books including a study of the Lost Cause Movement entitled Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry, UGA Press 2004. Never Surrender won the George C. Rogers Award for Best Book in South Carolina History, 2004.
Poole is also the author of South Carolina's Civil War, Mercer, 2005 and the co-editor of a collection of essays with Edward J. Blum entitled Vale of Tears: New Essays in Religion and Reconstruction, Mercer 2005.
