Louis Ferleger is Professor of History and chair of the History Department at Boston University. He is co-editor, co-author or editor of six books, including Agriculture and National Development: Views on the Nineteenth Century and Slavery, Secession, and Southern History. He is series editor of the Historians in Conversation series published by the University of South Carolina Press and has co-edited a special issue of The Annals devoted to globalization. He has been awarded many fellowships and grants, including two awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, an Earhart Fellowship, and a Twentieth Century Fund research grant. John Metz is Director of Archives, Records and Collections at the Library of Virginia. He has more than twenty years of experience in historical research, education, collections management, and programming through his work as an archaeologist, historian and architectural historian for museums and cultural institutions, including the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, the Bermuda National Trust, and the Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier. Metz has written and lectured extensively on Southern history, architecture, and material culture. He holds an MA in Anthropology from the College of William and Mary and a PhD in American Studies from Boston University.