Ball, Blake Scott

Dr. Blake Scott Ball joined the Huntingdon faculty in the fall of 2017 after completing his doctoral degree. He has previously taught as an assistant professor at Miles College, as an adjunct professor at the University of North Alabama, and as an adjunct professor at the University of Alabama. He served as assistant director for the New Summersell Center Public History Initiative at the University of Alabama, and as a graduate assistant for the Alabama Historical Association. An avid writer, he served as editor for the Southern Historian graduate history journal and as a contributor and assistant editor for The Historian behind the History, a collection of oral stories documenting historians’ graduate training and insights into the historical profession, published by the University of Alabama Press in 2014. His book, “Charlie Brown’s America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts,” was published by Oxford University Press in 2021.

PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS

“‘Snoopy is the Hero in Vietnam’: Ambivalence, Empathy, and Peanuts’ Vietnam War,” The Sixties 9.2, (June 2016).

Contributing Author and Assistant Editor, The Historian behind the History: Conversations with Southern Historians (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2014).

BOOK REVIEWS, OP-EDS, & COLUMNS

Review of Adam Rome, The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation (2013), The Sixties vol. 7, no. 1, (Spring 2015): 184-186.

“Fighting History to Make a Dime,” Guest Column on AL.com, February 26, 2016.

“Good Grief: A Message from Charlie Brown to Charlie Hebdo,” Op-Ed piece for Birmingham News, January 21, 2015.

Review of Alison Graham and Sharon Monteith, eds., The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Volume 18: Media (2011), The Alabama Review vol. 65, no. 2, (April 2014): 205-206.

Review of Charles W. Eagles, The Price of Defiance: James Meredith and the Integration of Ole Miss (2009), Southern Historian 32, (Spring 2011): 139-140.

Review of James J. Lorence, The Unemployed People’s Movement: Leftists, Liberals, and Labor in Georgia, 1929-1941 (2009), Southern Historian 31, (Spring 2010): 128-129.

CONFERENCE PAPERS/PRESENTATIONS

“We Prayed in School Today: Charles Schulz’s Peanuts as a Text for Studying the Political Culture of the 1960s.” Paper presented at the Alabama Historical Association meeting, April 2017.

“Every Girl Her Own Wonder Woman: The Struggle to Reach and Empower Girls through Comics in the 1980s.” Paper presented at the Michigan State University Comics Forum, February 2017.

“‘Charlie Brown Clears the Air’: Peanuts and the Rise of Environmentalism in an Age of Limits”. Paper presented as part of a “Sixty-Fifth Anniversary Celebration of Peanuts in American Culture” at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association annual meeting in New Orleans, April 2015.

“I Have a Vision, Charlie Brown: Peanuts and the Feminist Appeal in Postwar American Culture”. Paper presented at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association annual meeting in New Orleans, April 2015.

“Peanuts, Capitalist Discontent, and the Emergence of an Environmental Movement, 1950-1980”. Poster presented at the American Society for Environmental History annual meeting in Washington, D.C., April 2015.

“‘Curse This Stupid War!’: Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts and the Vietnam War Era”. Paper presented at the American Historical Association’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., January 2014.

“A Boy Named Charlie Brown: Comic Strips, Conversations, and American Culture”. Poster presented at the American Historical Association’s annual meeting in New Orleans, January 2013.

“White Flight Pioneers: Race, Class, and Image in Mountain Brook, AL, 1940-1955”. Given at the “Power and Struggle” Graduate History Conference, The University of Alabama, March 2012.

AWARDS

• 2014 Frank Lawrence Owsley Memorial Scholarship for outstanding work in the field of history
• Finalist for the University of Alabama Graduate School’s 2014 Excellence in Teaching by a Doctoral Student Award
• 2014 Ruth Marshall Kibbey Award for Outstanding Service to the History Department from the University of Alabama History faculty
• 2014 Outstanding Service Award from the University of Alabama Media Planning Board and the Office of Student Media for work as editor of Southern Historian
• 2013 Christopher G. Swindle Graduate Teaching Assistant Award from the University of Alabama History faculty
• Research grant from the Graduate School of the University of Alabama, Fall 2012, 2013

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

• Alabama Historical Association
• American Historical Association
• American Society for Environmental History
• Organization of American Historians
• Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association
• Southern Historical Association