Maxwell School Associate Professor John Scott Strickland Dies
John Scott Strickland, associate professor of history at
the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, passed away on Wednesday, May
28. He joined the faculty as an
assistant professor in 1984 and was named associate professor in 1990.
For many years, he served as the history
department’s undergraduate director, and his excellence in this position was
recognized with the award for Faculty Advisor of the Year. In addition, he co-directed,
along with Newhouse professor Richard Breyer, the M.A. program in Documentary Film
& History. He was an important friend and mentor to students and colleagues
alike.
Strickland’s research
and teaching focused on the history of the United States, with special emphasis
on the American South, religion, and African American history in the 18th
and 19th centuries. He also had a deep passion and expertise for the
era of the Vietnam War. He taught popular classes on the Civil War and
Reconstruction; Vietnam: Movies and Memoirs; U.S. History and Documentary Film;
and the U.S. in the 1960s.
Among Strickland’s
publications were Millennial Visions and Visible Congregations: Conversion, Community, and
the Culture of Resistance among South Carolina Slaves; "From Chiliasm to Community: Religion and
Cultural Change among South Carolina Slaves before the Civil War," and “’No
More Mud Work': The Struggle for Control of Labor Production in the South
Carolina Low Country, 1863-1880."
Strickland earned a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina in 1984. He was the recipient of several research
grants and awards including the Rockefeller Foundation Dissertation
Fellowship in 1978 and the American Council for Learned Societies Fellowship
for Recent Recipients of the Ph.D. in 1986. From 1983-1985, he was a Fellow at
the Carter G. Woodson Center for Afro- American and African Studies at the
University of Virginia. 05/29/14