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Associate Professor Ben Wise is a historian of modern America, and his research focuses on cultural history, moral politics, southern history, and the history of gender and sexuality. He joined the History Department at the University of Florida after teaching at Harvard University and holding a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
His first book, William Alexander Percy: The Curious Life of a Mississippi Planter and Sexual Freethinker (2012), was published by the University of North Carolina Press. The project received the C. Vann Woodward Prize for the best dissertation in the field of Southern History. His second and third books, The Collection (2024) and American Ace (2024) were the result of a collaborative, cross-disciplinary research effort with art theorist and photographer Craig Smith. The project also exhibited at the Harn Museum of Art during 2024-25 and continues with talks and showings across the country.
Wise’s current research focuses on the history of cultural conflict over religion and politics in America. He is finishing a book on culture wars, universities, and history teaching from the Jazz Age to the present.
Wise’s research has been supported by grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, and the Regional Humanities Center at Tulane University, among others. His articles have appeared in The Journal of American Studies, Southern Cultures, The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, The William Mitchell Law Review, and in the edited volume, Southern Masculinity: Perspectives on Manhood in the South Since Reconstruction.
Dr. Wise served as Undergraduate Coordinator for the History Department for nearly a decade, and teaches courses ranging from the introductory US History survey to upper level undergraduate and graduate courses on modern America, southern history, the Jazz Age, and American culture. He has received multiple teaching awards, including the University of Florida’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teacher of the Year and John Mahon Undergraduate Teaching Award, among others.