Professor
Office: TMH 211
Email: am34@txstate.edu
Phone: 512.245.2110
Educational Background :
Ph.D. - University of Houston
M.A. - Texas A&M University
B.A. (English) - Texas A&M University
Recent Research Topics :
- The Underground Railroad and Resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850
- Reconstruction Era Reform Movements
- Transatlantic Debates on Slavery and Abolition in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic World
Angela F. Murphy specializes in mid-nineteenth century social reform movements of the United States and the Atlantic World, with an emphasis on antislavery, Ireland, and sectional politics in the United States.
Publications
Books
Jermain Wesley Loguen: Defiant Fugitive (2025). Yale University Press.
The Jerry Rescue: The Fugitive Slave Law, Northern Rights, and the American Sectional Crisis (2014). Oxford University Press.
American Slavery, Irish Freedom: Abolition, Immigrant Citizenship, and the Transatlantic Movement for Irish Repeal (2010). Louisiana State University Press.
American Power, American People, Volume 1. Coauthor (2010). Nunn McGinty Press.
Chapters in Books
“Race, Labor, and Slavery in Antebellum Irish America.” In Routledge History of Irish America (2024). Routledge.
“Black Abolitionists in Ireland and the Challenge of Universal Reform.” In In Search of Liberty: African American Internationalism in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic World (2021). University of Georgia Press.
“Wendell Phillips and the American Indian.” In Wendell Phillips, Social Justice, and the Power of the Past (2016). Louisiana State University Press.
“Slavery and Irish Nationalism in the American South, 1840-1845.” In The Irish in the Atlantic World (2010). University of South Carolina Press.
Journal Articles
“Politicizing the Home: The Loguen Family’s Underground Railroad.” Journal of the Early Republic (2025).
“‘My Freedom I Derived from God’: Jermain Wesley Loguen’s Rejection of Freedom Purchase.” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History (2024).
“‘This Foul Slavery-Reviving System’: Irish Opposition to the Jamaica Emigration Scheme, 1840-1842.” Slavery & Abolition (2016).
“‘Though Dead He Yet Speaketh’: Abolitionist Memories of Daniel O’Connell in the United States.” American Journal of Irish Studies (2013).
“Daniel O’Connell and the “American Eagle” in 1845: Slavery, Diplomacy, Nativism, and the Collapse of America’s First Irish Nationalist Movement.” Journal of American Ethnic History (2007).
“‘It Outlaws Me, and I Outlaw It!’: Resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law in Syracuse, New York.” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History (2004, reprint 2021).
Courses Taught
HIST 1310 | History of the United States, 1877 to the Present
A general survey of the history of the United States from its settlement to the end of Reconstruction.
HIST 1320 | History of the United States to 1877
A general survey of the history of the United States from Reconstruction to present.
HIST 3342 | Social and Intellectural History of the United States to 1865
A history of American culture, with emphasis on the development of religious, political, social, and philosophical ideas through the Civil War.
HIST 3346 | Era of Civil War and Reconstruction
The history of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 through the election of 1876.
HON 3396L | Early American History through Biography
A survey of early American history, from colonial times through 1877, through the lens of biography.
HIST 4350A | Slavery and Emancipation in the Americas
Examines Atlantic slavery and the societies that it shaped in the Americas.
HIST 4367 | Antebellum America
A survey of conflicting American attitudes about the desirability of a strong central government, rapid economic growth, aggressive national expansion, and human slavery in a democratic society.
HIST 5345K | Sectionalism and Slavery in the United States
Assesses the literature on the causes and consequences of the sectional conflict between the American North and South before the Civil War, and will focus on works examining the slavery issue and the way it exacerbated American sectionalism, leading to the fracturing of the American nation.
HIST 5345L | Public Memory and American History
Explores recent scholarly inquiries into the ways in which American society, and various groups within that society, have shaped the collective memory of various aspects of the American past.
HIST 5360 | American Historiography
A study of the literature of American history with some attention to the philosophies of history and the principles of historical research.
HIST 5366C | Antebellum American Society and Culture
Explores the cultural dynamics, social relations, and political and economic structures that shaped the lives of ordinary Americans in the three decades before the Civil War.
HIST 5367 | American Civil War
A seminar based on topics in the American Civil War.
HIST 5398: General Research Seminar
A seminar designed to enhance research and writing skills in history. May be repeated for credit as topic varies.