#  Karen Cox 

Visiting Scholar in the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History

 

 

 



   ![Cox, Karen_ photo](/sites/g/files/omnuum5671/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/2026-07/Cox%2C%20Karen_photo.jpg?itok=xaxpPnqr) 

 



 





 

Karen L. Cox is an award-winning historian of the American South and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. She is the author of four books and the editor or co-editor of two volumes on southern history. In 2021, the *Wall Street Journal* listed her first book, *Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture*, as one of the top five books on the Lost Cause. A 2nd edition of her most recent book, *No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice*, was released in early 2026.

Karen has written op-eds for the *New York Times*, the *Washington Post*, *CNN*, *TIME*, *Publishers Weekly*, and *Smithsonian Magazine*. She appeared in Henry Louis Gates’s PBS documentary *Reconstruction: America after the Civil War*, and the Emmy-nominated documentary *The Neutral Ground*, which examines the underlying history of Confederate monuments through the lens of monument removal in New Orleans. She is currently working on a book titled *Confederate Nation* that examines how the Lost Cause, a post-Civil War southern mythology, reshaped American culture and politics.



 

 

 





 

 

- ## Current People
    
     [Faculty Fellows](/faculty-fellows)