Lightner, David
David L. Lightner
(Professor Emeritus)
Ph.D., Cornell University, 1969
A.M., University of Pennsylvania, 1964
B.A., Pennsylvania State University, 1963
Expertise & Research Interests
American Economic and Labour History
Nineteenth-Century United States
Slavery and Antislavery
1930s Great Depression and New Deal
Current Project
Never Mind Their Morals: The Life and Times of Winnie Lightner, Star of Vaudeville, Broadway, and the Talkies. I am writing a biography of singer and comedian Winnie Lightner (no relation to me), who was the foremost female star of Warner Brothers pictures in the early 1930s. "Wild and Wonderful" Winnie Lightner was famed for her ability to belt out song after song, her bold and brassy acting style, and her gleeful mockery of conventional morality and gender roles. Winnie Lightner is believed to be the first person in motion picture history to be censored for spoken words rather than visual images.
1975-77 1974-75 1970-74 1969-70
Books Slavery and the Commerce Power: How the Struggle Against the Interstate Slave Trade Led to the Civil War. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006. Asylum, Prison, and Poorhouse: The Writings and Reform Work of Dorothea Dix in Labor on the Chapters and Essays: "Dorothea Dix." Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History. Forthcoming, 2012. "The Supreme Court and the Interstate Slave Trade: A Study in Evasion, Anarchy, and Extremism." "The Friendship": Civil Rights and Litigation. Pennsylvania Bar Institute, 2005. Chap. 3. Reprint of 2004 article. "Dorothea Lynde Dix." Philanthropy in America: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Ed. Dwight F. Burlingame. 3 vols. ABC-CLIO sponsored by Indiana University Center on Philanthropy, 2004. Vol. 1, pp. 119-20. "Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887), Campaigner for Mental Hospitals." Notable American Philanthropists: A Biographical Encyclopedia of Giving and Volunteering. Ed. Robert T. Grimm. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002. Pp. 80-83. "The Interstate Slave Trade in Antislavery Politics." Abolitionism and American Politics and Government. Ed. John R. McKivigan. New York: Garland Publishing, 1999. Chap. 12, pp. 217-34. Reprint of 1990 article. "William Henry Bissell." American National Biography. Ed. John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. 24 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Vol. 2, pp. 843-44. "Railroads and the American Economy: The Fogel Thesis in Retrospect." Railways. Ed. Terry Gourvish. Studies in Transportation History Series. Ed. John Armstrong. 6 vols. Aldershot, UK: Scholar Press, 1996. Reprint of 1983 article. "Abraham Lincoln and the Ideal of Equality." American Vistas. Ed. Leonard Dinnerstein and Kenneth T. Jackson. 6th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Chap. 21, pp. 326-41. Also in 5th ed. (1987), chap. 18, pp. 274-89. Reprint, with revisions, of 1982 article. Articles: Co-author with Alexander M. Ragan. "Were African American Slaveholders Benevolent or Exploitative?: A Quantitative Approach." Journal of Southern History 70 (Aug. 2005): 535-58. "The Supreme Court and the Interstate Slave Trade: A Study in Evasion, Anarchy, and Extremism." Journal of Supreme Court History 29 (Nov. 2004): 229-53. "The Founders and the Interstate Slave Trade.@ Journal of the Early Republic 22 (Spring 2002): 25-51. "The Interstate Slave Trade as an Issue in the Secession Crisis." Southern Studies 9 (Summer/Fall 1998): 1-35. "Ten Million Acres for the Insane: The Forgotten Collaboration of Dorothea L. Dix and William H. Bissell." "Managing Madness." Canadian Review of American Studies 26 (Winter 1996): 147-58. "'A Thousand Times, No!': William H. Bissell and the Southern Challenge." "Abraham Lincoln and American Values." Canadian Review of American Studies 25 (Spring 1995): 103-112. "Myths About "The Interstate Slave Trade in Antislavery Politics." Civil War History 36 (June 1990): 119-36. "More Time on the Cross: Slavery and the Slave Trade." Canadian Review of American Studies 21 (Winter 1990): 363-68. "The Door to the Slave Bastille: The Abolitionist Assault upon the Interstate Slave Trade." Civil War History 34 (Sept. 1988): 235-52. "Simon "Good and Evil Mixed: Lincoln and His Party in the Civil War Era." Canadian Review of American Studies 18 (Winter 1987): 541-51. "Railroads and the American Economy: The Fogel Thesis in Retrospect." Journal of Transport History 3rd series, 4 (Sept. 1983): 20-34. "Abraham Lincoln and the Ideal of Equality." Journal of the "Abolitionism, Women's Rights, Labor Reform, and Evangelicalism: The Search for Connections." Canadian Review of American Studies 12 (Fall 1981): 225-34. "Construction Labor on the "Private Land Claims in
Positions Held
1977-2007
Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta
Professor Emeritus 2007
Professor 2006
Associate Professor 1983
Assistant Professor 1978
Sessional Instructor 1977
Department of History, University of Connecticut
Visiting Assistant Professor
Institute of Social History, City College, City University of New York
Research Assistant
Department of History and Paracollege, St. Olaf College
Assistant Professor of History and Tutor of the Paracollege
Department of History, University of Illinois at Chicago
Assistant Professor
Publications
