History

Jason Stacy

Office Phone: 618-650-3966
Location: Peck Hall, Rm. 1235
Email: jstacy@siue.edu

Education

PhD, Loyola University Chicago, 2006

Books

Walt Whitman Between Leaves: Tracing Paths Untrodden, 1856-1860, with Stephanie Blalock, Kevin McMullen, and Stefan Schöberlein, University of Edinburgh Press, under contract. (monograph)

Spoon River America: Edgar Lee Masters and the Myth of the American Small Town, University of Illinois Press, 2021. (monograph)

Fabric of a Nation: A Brief History with Skills and Sources, with Matt Ellington, Nancy Hewitt, Steven Lawson, Bedford/Freeman/Worth, First Edition, 2020; Second Edition, 2024. (textbook)

Documenting United States History: Themes, Concepts and Skills for the AP® Course, with Stephen Heller, Bedford/Freeman/Worth, 2015. (textbook)

Walt Whitman’s Multitudes:  Labor Reform and Persona in Whitman’s Journalism and the First Leaves of Grass, 1840-1855, Peter Lang Publishers, 2008. (monograph)

Editions (print)

Spoon River Revisited: Teaching a Literary Classic in the 21^st Century, with Caroline Gelmi, University of Illinois Press, under contract. 

Heartland Utopia: William Allen White on the Ideal Midwestern Town, with Charles Delgadillo, University Press of Kansas, forthcoming 2026.

The New Star Chamber and Other Essays, Edgar Lee Masters, Southern Illinois University Press/Saluki Publishing (with students in HIST 446: Editing History), 2023.

Legends of Mexico, George Lippard, Hastings College Press, 2019. (with students in HIST 425: History of American Ideas), 2019.

Past Forward: Articles from the Journal of American History vol. 1, with James Sabathne, Oxford University Press, 2016.

Past Forward: Articles from the Journal of American History vol. 2, with James Sabathne, Oxford University Press, 2016.

Walt Whitman's Selected Journalism, with Douglas Noverr, University of Iowa Press, 2015.

Leaves of Grass 1860: The 150th Anniversary Facsimile Edition, University of Iowa Press, 2009.

Editions (digital) 

“Walt Whitman’s Journalism in the Brooklyn Daily Times,” with Stephanie Blalock, Kevin McMullen, and Stefan Schöberlein, The Walt Whitman Archive, 2024.

“Walt Whitman's Editorials for the New York Aurora,” The Walt Whitman Archive, 2020.

“Walt Whitman's ‘Sun-Down Papers--From the Desk of a Schoolmaster’,” The Walt Whitman Archive, 2016.

“Walt Whitman's ‘Letters from a Traveling Bachelor’,” The Walt Whitman Archive, 2015.

“Walt Whitman's ‘Letters from Paumanok’,” The Walt Whitman Archive, 2014.

“Walt Whitman's ‘New York Dissected’,” The Walt Whitman Archive, 2014.

Book Chapters  

"Edgar Lee Masters, Ann Rutledge's Grave, Petersburg, Illinois," Lingering Inland: A Literary Tour of the Midwest, Andy Oler, ed., Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2025.

“Containing Multitudes: Interdisciplinary Student Research at the Walt Whitman Archive,” with Stephanie Blalock, Kevin McMullen, and Stefan Schöberlein, Students in the Archives: Archival Pedagogy in Practice, Amanda Fox, Amanda Stuckey, eds., Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, forthcoming.

“The Midwestern Small Town: An Interpretive Problem with Mythical Proportions,” Between Loving and Leaving: Essays on the New Midwestern History, ed. Jon Lauck, University of Oklahoma Press, 2025.

“Walt Whitman’s Print Personas: 1840-1865,” in Ken Price, Stefan Schöberlein (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Walt Whitman, Oxford University Press, 2024.

“Popucrats: Producerist Populism and the Formation of Midwestern Political Identity in the 1890s,” in Jon Lauck (Ed.), The Making of the Midwest:  Essays on the Formation of Midwestern Identity, 1787-1900, Hastings College Press, 2020.

“Clerk Trouble: Masculinity, Consumerism, and Whitman's Print Culture,” in Robert Evans (Ed.), Critical Insights: Walt Whitman, Salem Press, 2019.

“Walt Whitman’s Journalism,” in Joanna Levin and Ed Whitley, eds., Walt Whitman in Context, Cambridge University Press, 2018.

“Whitman, Lincoln, and a Forgotten Form of Freedom,” in Stephen Hansen, Caroline Pryor, eds., Teaching Lincoln, Peter Lang Publishers, 2014.

Journal Articles 

“’One of the grand works of the world’: Walt Whitman and the Brooklyn Waterworks, 1856-1859,” with Stephanie M. Blalock, and Kevin McMullen, Stefan Schöberlein, Technology and Culture, 65, no. 1 (2024): 237-263.

“Walt Whitman, Editor of the New-York Atlas,” with Stefan Schöberlein, Stephanie M. Blalock, and Kevin McMullen, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, 39 (2022), 188-207.

“Whose Revolt? Carl Van Doren and the Manufactured Revolt from the Village,” Midwestern Miscellany 49 (2021), 93 -117.

“Walt Whitman at the Aurora: A Model for Journalistic Attribution,” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, with Kevin McMullen and Stefan Schöberlein, 37 (2019), 107-115.

“Walt Whitman's Journalism.” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, 34 (2017), 358-361

“Secondhand Arguments: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of the American Antismoking Campaign, 1900-2000,” with Stephen Hansen, Studies in American Culture, 37 (2014), 101-119.

“Morbid Inferences: Whitman, Wikipedia, and the Debate over the Poet's Sexuality,” with Cory Blad and Robert Velella, Polymath: An Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Journal, 3(2013), 1-15.

“Building Reading, Writing and Analysis in the AP US History Classroom,” with Stephen Heller, Social Education, 77 (2013), 256-259.

“Becoming Illuminated: New York City’s Public-School Society and Its Religious Discontents, 1805-1840. American Educational History, 37 (2010), 455-471.

“Washington's Tears: Sentimental Anecdote and Walt Whitman's Battle of Long Island. Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, 27 (2010), 213-226.

“An Appeal to the Unappealing: Some Thoughts on Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman’s Troubling Anti-Slavery Rhetoric. Learning for Democracy: An International Journal of Thought and Practice, 3 (2009), 1-19.

“The Guide on the Stage: In Defense of Good Lecturing in the History Classroom,” Social Education, Oct. 2009, 274-277.

“Showing Their Condition:  Walt Whitman and Ethical Aesthetics in the ‘Sun-Down Papers,’” The Mickle Street Review: an Electronic Journal of Whitman and American Studies, 19/20 (2008).

“Dialectic for U.S. History (with apologies to Professor Hegel),” Journal of the Illinois Council for the Social Sciences, 67 (Fall 2007), 11-18.

“Strangers Across the Hall:  Comparing the DBQ and Synthesis Questions,” AP English Language and Composition Special Focus:  Using Sources, 2007.

“’I do not think we can keep universities open with bayonets’: The May 1970 Riots at Southern Illinois University,” Journal of Illinois History, Winter 9 (2006), 283-306.

“Containing Multitudes:  Whitman, the Working Class, and the Music of Moderate Reform,” Popular Culture Review, 13 (2002)(2), 137-154.

Grants (selected)

2026-2029:National Endowment for the Humanities. "’Missing Me One Place, Search Another’": Locating and Digitally Editing Walt Whitman's Unsigned Journalism,” Walt Whitman Archive, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Texas A&M Central Texas, University of Iowa.

2024-2025: National Endowment for the Humanities, "Between the Columns: A Toolkit for Periodical Authorship, Attribution, and Display," Walt Whitman Archive, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Texas A&M Central Texas, University of Iowa,.

2021-2023: National Endowment for the Humanities, “Walt Whitman’s Journalism: Finding the Poet in the Brooklyn Daily Times,” Walt Whitman Archive, University of Nebraska, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Marshall University, University of Iowa.

2015-2018: Madison County Regional Office of Education, Madison Historical: The Online Encyclopedia and Digital Archive of Madison County, Illinois.

2013-2016: National Endowment for the Humanities, “Walt Whitman Before Leaves of Grass,” Walt Whitman Archive, University of Nebraska, University of Iowa, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

2009-2012: Department of Education, Teaching American History Grant, “People and Places: The Story of Freedom, Liberty, and Equality,” St. Clair County Regional Office of Education, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.