James Kirby Martin
Distinguished University Professor (United States)
640 Agnes Arnold Hall
(713) 743-3107
jmartin@uh.edu

Dr. Martin is a nationally recognized scholar of early American history. For more than thirty years Martin has explored the multiple aspects of the American Revolution and the key figures that encompassed the event. Martin received his M.A. and Ph.D. from The University of Wisconsin. He has taught at the University of Houston since 1980. Dr. Martin has been the Assistant Provost for Administration and the Vice President for Academic Affairs at Rutgers University. At the University of Houston he served as chair of the History Department, the Faculty Senate, been the intercollegiate athletics policy advisor and has been a member of the University Planning committee.

Professor Martin has been the advisor on numerous thesis and dissertation committees and general editor for a book series on the American Social Experience (NYU Press) and the consulting editor for a book series titled Conversations With The Presses (Brandywine Press).

Teaching:
Dr. Martin's teaching interests include early American history through the Revolution, American military history through the Civil War, and medicine and health in the American experience, especially in relation to the history of drinking, smoking, and illegal drugs. He has taught many different undergraduate courses ranging from the survey history of the United States and Colonial and Revolutionary American history to topical courses on such subjects as disease and addiction in the American experience. His graduate level course offerings include Early American historiography as well as the introductory and advanced courses on research and writing in United States history. He also teaches a course on the history of ordinary persons in early American history.

Research:
Dr. Martin is the author and editor of more than ten books and dozens of articles. His research interests focus on early American history and the Revolutionary era with an emphasis on social, military, and political developments. In addition, he is working on a study of American health reform and the history of smoking in America, a companion volume to his earlier co-authored study on drinking in America. Professor Martin is committed to writing projects involving a new study of Revolutionary America (with Marla Miller of the University of Massachusetts) for Oxford University Press; the Oneida Indians in the American Revolution (with former department member Joseph Glatthaar); an investigation of the politics of making war through a case study of the pivotal Saratoga campaign of 1777; and further writing on Benedict Arnold.

Selected Publications:
Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered (New York University Press, 1997).

Drinking in America: A History 1620-1980. (The Free Press, a division of the Macmillan Company, 1982). Revised edition, 1987. With M. E. Lender.

A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic, 1763-1789 (Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1982) with M. E. Lender.

In the Course of Human Events:An Interpretive Exploration of the American (Harlan Davidson, Inc.,1979).

Men in Rebellion. Higher Governmental Leaders and the Coming of the American Revolution (Rutgers University Press,1973).

America and Its Peoples :A Mosaic in the Making. Longman, Inc.,1989 [formerly Scott, Foresman & Company, and HarperCollins Publishers]. Fifth edition, 2004.With Randy W. Roberts, Steven H. Mintz, Linda O. McMurry, and James H. Jones; (ed.).

Ordinary Courage :The Revolutionary War Adventures of Joseph Plumb Martin (Brandywine Press, 1993). Second edition, 1999; (ed.).

Citizen-Soldier: The Revolutionary War Journal of Joseph Bloomfield (New Jersey Historical Society, 1982).With M. E. Lender; (ed.).

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