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Adrienne Petty

Director of Undergraduate Studies, Associate Professor, History

Research: Southern Farming and Rural Life Post-Civil War
Office: Blair 332
Email: [[ampetty]]

Background

Adrienne Petty is a historian of the United States who examines the transformation of southern farming and rural life since the Civil War. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2004 and holds a B.A. from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Dr. Petty co-directed the oral history project “Breaking New Ground: A History of African American Farm Owners,” which produced more than 300 interviews of southern black farmers and their descendants. She and the project’s co-director, historian Mark Schultz of Lewis University, are currently completing a history of African American farm owners that draws upon on the interviews.

Her book, Standing Their Ground: Small Farmers in North Carolina Since the Civil War (2013), won the Theodore Saloutos Award of the Agricultural History Society and the H.L. Mitchell Award of the Southern Historical Association.