Colin Reynolds is presently a graduate student in the Emory program.  He received his B.A. in History from Grinnell College in 2007 and his M.A. in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago in 2009.  He is interested in twentieth-century U.S. political and social history, specifically the rise of conservative populism during the second half of the last century.  His advisor is Prof. Joe Crespino, and Colin expects to work closely with both him and Patrick Allitt.  He writes, “My recent work has focused on West Virginia.  My MA thesis was entitled ‘Born Again Solidarity: Conservative Activism and Organized Labor in the Textbook Controversy of 1974.’  I considered how conservative activists and their rhetoric influenced working-class activism in a 1974 protest against public school textbooks.  Most recently I wrote a short history of West Virginia’s Bureau of Negro Welfare and Statistics, considering how this organization operated as part of the state’s government before integration, and how its existence complicates nice distinctions between radical and conservative civil rights activism.”