Associate Professor
Phone: 903.566.7371
Email: mstith@uttyler.edu
Building: CAS Office 127
Department: History
Matthew Stith
Degrees
- Ph.D., University of Arkansas
- M.A., University of Arkansas
- B.A., Missouri Southern State University
Biography
Matt Stith’s teaching and research interests cover a wide range of themes and periods in American history. He teaches courses on antebellum America and the Civil War era as well as thematic classes about environmental history, military history, the West, the South, the Vietnam War, and more. He is the author or co-editor of five books and several published essays and is working on a book tentatively titled American Ursus: A Cultural and Environmental History of Bears in the South. Prof. Stith is happy to advise M.A. students interested in researching and writing about American environmental history, American military history, and/or the American South or West.
Selected Publications:
Books:
Camp Ford’s Civil War: Community, Nature, and Captivity in the Dark Corner of the Confederacy (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
Extreme Civil War: Guerrilla Warfare, Environment, and Race on the Trans-Mississippi Frontier (LSU Press, 2016)
Edited Books:
Hundreds of Little Wars: Community, Conflict, and the Real Civil War, co-edited with G. David Schieffler (LSU Press, 2025)
New Perspectives on the First World War: Beyond No Man’s Land, co-edited with Mandy Link (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
Beyond the Quagmire: New Interpretations of the Vietnam War, co-edited with Geoffrey Jensen (University of North Texas Press, 2019)
Selected Articles and Chapters:
“Camp Ford, Texas: Nature and Community in the ‘Dark Corner of the Confederacy,’” in G. David Schieffler and Matthew M. Stith, eds., Hundreds of Little Wars: Community, Conflict, and the Real Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2025)
“Of Rats and Men: The Decisive Role of Rodents on the Western Front,” in Mandy Link and Matthew M. Stith, eds., New Perspectives on the First World War: Beyond No Man’s Land (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
“All Quiet on Every Front: Fighting the Great War Beyond No Man’s Land,” with Mandy Link, in Mandy Link and Matthew M. Stith, eds., New Perspectives of the First World War: Beyond No Man’s Land (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
“Irregular and Guerrilla Warfare during the Civil War,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, ed. Jon Butler (New York: Oxford University Press, January 2023) [6,000+ word, peer-reviewed essay]
“The Natural Environment and the American Military Experience in Vietnam,” in Geoffrey W. Jensen and Matthew M. Stith, eds., Beyond the Quagmire: New Interpretations of the Vietnam Conflict (Denton: University of North Texas Press, March 2019)
“Knights of the Brush: Guerrilla Warfare and the Environment in the Trans-Mississippi Theater,” in Barton Myers and Brian McKnight, eds., The Guerrilla Hunters: Irregular Conflicts During the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, April 2017)
“Race and Irregular Warfare on the Trans-Mississippi Border, 1861-1865” in Geoffrey Jensen, ed., The Routledge History of Race and the American Military (New York: Routledge Press, 2016)
"'Denizens of the Forest': Hunting Black Bears and Identity in the Mississippi Delta," Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies (Winter 2015)
“‘The Deplorable Condition of the Country’: Nature, Society, and War on the Trans-Mississippi Frontier,” Civil War History 58 (September 2012)
“Guerrillas, Civilians, and the Union Response in Jasper County, Missouri, 1861-1865,” Military History of the West 38 (2008)
“‘Women Locked the Doors, Children Screamed, and Men Trembled in their Boots’: Black Bears, People, and Extirpation in Arkansas,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 66 (Spring 2007). Winner of the Violet Gingles Award for Best Essay, Arkansas Historical Association; Nominated for the Alice Hamilton Prize, American Society for Environmental History.