Name: Donald A. Rakestraw
Title: Professor of History; Department Chair of History
Education: Ph.D., U.S. Diplomatic History, University of Alabama
M.A., U.S. Social and Cultural History, Jacksonville State University
B.A., History and Political Science, Jacksonville State University
Office: 367 Bancroft Hall; 210 Dinkins Hall
Phone: 803/323-3923
E-mail: rakestrawd@winthrop.edu
Web:
Area(s): U.S. Diplomatic History, Nineteenth Century America, Antebellum America, American
Studies
Dr. Rakestraw received his Ph.D. from the University of Alabama and served as professor of history and director of American Studies at Georgia Southern University before coming to Winthrop in 2013. He has published dozens of scholarly works, including Choice Academic Book of the Year Prologue to Manifest Destiny: Anglo-American Relations in the 1840s (with Howard Jones) and "The Diplomacy of the Civil War" in American Foreign Relations: A Guide to the Literature since 1600 (ABC-CLIO). His recent efforts include an article on the "Alabama Affair" in Essential Civil War Curriculum for the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech (2015) and "From the Confederation to the Civil War" (with Robert Smith) for The SHAFR Guide Online: An Annotated Bibliography of U.S. Foreign Relations since 1600 (Brill, 2017). In fall 2018, he published Daniel Webster: Defender of Peace at the invitation of Rowman & Littlefield's American Foreign Relations Series. Professor Rakestraw has taught graduate and undergraduate courses and research seminars on the history of Anglo-American relations and delivered lectures on the history of US Foreign relations, and nineteenth century America on both sides of the Atlantic, including a summer seminar at Wadham College, Oxford University that ran for over ten years. At Winthrop, he teaches for History and University College and currently serves as Professor and Chair for the Department of History.