David C. Williard is a historian of the United States. He specializes in the transformative effects of war on the meaning of citizenship, with a particular interest in the Civil War and Reconstruction. More broadly, his teaching and research interrogate how contested identities emerge from the intersection of ideology and experience. He is at work on two major projects: a book titled Confederate Legacy: The Problem of Soldierhood in the Post-Civil War South, and a project titled "One Part Against Another: George Washington, Memory, and the Limits of the Second American Revolution," which examines the public memory of George Washington in the American Civil War era and its influence on American political culture.
He has published in the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of the Civil War Era, and has a chapter in Paul Quigley, ed, The Civil War and the Transformation of American Citizenship (LSU Press: 2018). He teaches courses on modern United States history, the Civil War era, United States military history, historical memory, the long emancipation, and violence in American history.