Department: History

Areas of expertise:

• American Revolution and America's Founding 
• Old age and aging in historical perspective 
• American Loyalists 
• Peacemaking and refugees in historical perspective 

Rebecca Brannon is an associate professor in the history department where she teaches courses in United States history that focus on the colonial, revolutionary, and early national period. She is a noted scholar of American Loyalists. Her first book From Revolution to Reunion: The Reintegration of the South Carolina Loyalists (2016) won the 2016 George C. Rogers Award and was listed by the Journal of the American Revolution as one of the top 100 books on the American Revolution. She is also the editor (along with Joseph S. Moore) of a wide-ranging look at the Loyalist experience in The Consequences of Loyalism, (2019). Her work has brought her to audiences through NPR shows such as With Good Reason and Backstory, TLC's "Who Do You Think You Are?," and Bill O'Reilly's "Legends and Lies: The American Patriots." 

She received a doctorate in history from the University of Michigan, and holds a bachelor's degree magna cum laude from Amherst College. 

Media contact: Eric Gorton, gortonej@jmu.edu