Kyle F. Zelner

Kyle Zelner, Ph.D. (William & Mary, 2003) teaches courses in the history of colonial and Revolutionary America, early American war and society, and history methods and writing at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, in addition to being a Co-Director of the Dale Center for the Study of War & Society.

Zelner's book "A Rabble in Arms: Massachusetts Towns and Militiamen during King Philip's War" was published in 2009 as the inaugural volume in the Warfare and Culture series of New York University Press. The study examines the social background of impressed soldiers during King Philip's War and the government system which impressed them; he argues that the conventional wisdom about a broadly democratic militia in seventeenth century colonial America is largely false. The book has received favorable reviews in the "Journal of American History," the "Journal of Military History," the "New England Quarterly," the "Journal of America's Military Past," "Choice," and on H-War. Zelner has presented his research at number of professional conferences, including meetings of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, the Society of Military History, the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Watchman Center, the Great Lakes Historical Society, and the American Historical Association, as well as speaking at the International Historical Miniature Gaming Society's War College in 2010. His other publications include an article in the "New England Quarterly"; contributions to the "Encyclopedia of North American Colonial American Warfare to 1775," the "Encyclopedia of American War Literature," and the "Encyclopedia of U.S. Military History"; and book reviews for the "New England Quarterly," "The Journal of Southern History," and the "Journal of Military History." He is currently working on a study of New England towns founded for and by veterans of the region’s colonial wars.