Mackenzie Tor

Mackenzie Tor photo
Ph.D. Candidate
Advisor
Jeffrey L. Pasley
Research Area
United States
Education

M.A., University of Missouri (2020)

B.A., Providence College (2017)

Research Interests

Broadly speaking, I am interested in Black intellectual history, political culture, and social reforms in the long nineteenth century. My dissertation, entitled “Spirited Struggles: The Black Temperance Movement in Nineteenth-Century America,” traces the evolution of African American men and women’s participation in the temperance movement from the 1790s until the onset of national Prohibition in the United States. In it, I consider how ideas about alcohol, slavery, race, and citizenship intersected, pushing Black reformers to link teetotalism with the broader fight for equal rights.

Recent Publications

“‘The Tyrant Intemperance’: Temperance, Abolition, and Antebellum Black Reform Thought,” forthcoming in Journal of the Early Republic

Review of Megan L. Bever’s At War with King Alcohol: Debating Drinking and Masculinity in the Civil War in American Nineteenth Century History 24, no. 1 (2023): 108-109

Awards/Fellowships/Grants

Friends of the MCEAS Dissertation Fellow, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania (2024-2025)

Brown Family Collection Fellow, American Antiquarian Society (2024-2025)

Regional Research Fellow, New England Fellowship Consortium (2024-2025)

Scholar of Distinction, University of Missouri Graduate School (2024)

Scholarly Programming Fellow, Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy (2021-2024)

Graduate Assistantship, Kinder Institute MA in Atlantic History & Politics Summer Study Abroad Program, Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford (2022 & 2023)

Frank and Louise Stephens History Scholarship, Department of History, University of Missouri (2023)

Summer Travel Grant, Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy (2023)

M.A. Fellow in Political History, Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy (2019-2020)

Additional Information

In addition to personal research, I enjoy collaborating on scholarly, public-oriented endeavors. I have edited entries for the The Haskell Monroe Collection: Life in the Confederacy (spearheaded by MU PhD Candidate Brendon Floyd) and am currently assisting Prof. Merve Fejzula with a project documenting the career and activism of Younousse Seye, Senegal’s first female contemporary artist.