Altina Waller

Professor Emeritus

Ph.D., Massachusetts

Areas of Specialty
U.S. Social History, 19th Century, Family and Community History

Current Research Interests
Appalachian Feuding and Modernization; Peggy Eaton, Patriarchy, and Capitalism in Jacksonian America

Biography
Altina Waller earned her B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She has taught at West Virginia University in Morgantown, Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, and the State University of New York in Plattsburgh. She came to the University of Connecticut as Head of the History Department in 1995 and was reappointed in 2000 for a second five-year term. A specialist in 19th century United States history, she has taught courses in Social History, Early Republic, Jacksonian Era, Civil War, Family History and Methodology. A specialist in southern Appalachia, she is currently writing a book on the scandal surrounding Andrew Jackson and Peggy Eaton. In the fall of 2001 she held a fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society to pursue this project. Professor Waller retired from UConn in 2008.

Selected Publications
Appalachia in the Making, editor with Dwight Billings and Mary Beth Pudup, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).

Feud: Hatfields, McCoys and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988).

Reverend Beecher and Mrs. Tilton: Sex and Class in Victorian America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982).

“Community, Class, and Race in the Memphis Riot of 1866,” Journal of Social History, Vol. 18, No. 2, December 1984, 233-246.

“Peggy Eaton and Andrew Jackson: A Presidential Scandal,” in True Stories from the American Past, Vol. 1: To 1865, edited by Altina Waller and William Graebner, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1996, pp. 162-180.

“The Perils of Capitalism: Smith Weed and Entrepreneurship in Northern New York, 1864-1902,” New York History, 75:2 (April 1994), 173-208.