Joe Angelillo is a historian of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, specializing in constitutional history, the U.S. South, and African American history. He joined the graduate program after completing his B.A. at Rhodes College.
By studying Black-led movements to achieve racially representative juries in the Reconstruction-era South, his research addresses fundamental questions about the nature of race and democracy. These include: who counts as another’s “peer,” how does one achieve “impartiality,” and how does racism and racial violence impact the ways we define these terms? This work also reveals the provenance of expansive interpretations of non-exclusionary (what we today call “colorblind”) law in the Reconstruction era. Joe’s work shows that many activists and public officials saw non-exclusionary law as empowering the purposeful impaneling of Black jurors.
Joe teaches on race, law, and democracy in the nineteenth century. He seeks to demonstrate the historical contingency behind ideas that many take for granted. He is a semifinalist for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ Graduate Student Teaching Award.