Scott Hancock

Scott Hancock is an associate professor of history and Africana Studies at Gettysburg College. After spending fourteen years working with teenagers in crisis, he switched careers and received a Ph.D. in Early American History in 1999 from the University of New Hampshire. This combination of careers fuels his desire to tell the stories of people whom society and history have tended to discount as troublesome and unimportant. Currently he is exploring how whiteness, white supremacy, and the...See more

Scott Hancock is an associate professor of history and Africana Studies at Gettysburg College. After spending fourteen years working with teenagers in crisis, he switched careers and received a Ph.D. in Early American History in 1999 from the University of New Hampshire. This combination of careers fuels his desire to tell the stories of people whom society and history have tended to discount as troublesome and unimportant. Currently he is exploring how whiteness, white supremacy, and the systemic rejection of Blackness were the unifying features of white American identity and politics across the North-South divide, and how that unity was manifested during the creation of Civil War battlefields. Some of his scholarly work has appeared in the anthologies Paths to Freedom ; We Shall Independent Be ; Slavery, Resistance, Freedom ; and in the journal Civil War History . As part of trying to continue being an activist scholar, he engages in dialogue with visitors to the Gettysburg battlefields and contributes to local and regional newspapers such as the Gettysburg Times and Philadelphia Inquirer or online publications such as CityLab. See less