After holding a post-doctoral fellowship from the National Publications Commission, he joined the faculty at USC in 1972. Professor Edgar teaches several interdisciplinary honors seminars on the American South, undergraduate and graduate courses on South Carolina history, and a graduate seminar on Southern Cultural history. His publications include South Carolina: A History, Partisans and Redcoats: The Southern Conflict that Turned the Tide of the American Revolution, South Carolina in the Modern Age, and several edited works, Renaissance Man: Essays on Robert Penn Warren and The Letterbook of Robert Pringle. He was the founder and first director of the department’s highly acclaimed Public History Program. In addition to his departmental responsibilities, Professor Edgar directs the interdisciplinary Institute for Southern Studies and hosts two statewide programs on South Carolina Public Radio: “Walter Edgar’s Journal,” a look at contemporary events in context and “Southern Read,” a reading of contemporary Southern fiction.

Current Activities:

I am currently the editor-in-chief of the South Carolina Encyclopedia, a collaborative project funded by a multi-year grant from the South Carolina Humanities Council. It is an exciting project, but also a challenge to deal with more than 600 authors for entries and 60 museums, archives, and private collections for illustrative materials. When published this will be the first comprehensive reference work on the state.

http://www.cas.sc.edu/hist/faculty/edgar/edgar.htm