Dr. Robert T. Chase is the new public historian at the College of Charleston’s Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture. Dr. Chase specializes in public history, oral history, civil rights and social justice movements, and African-American history. Born in New York City and raised in Washington, DC, Dr. Chase received his MA in history from George Mason University and his PhD in history at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he received the university’s E.B. and Jean Smith prize for best dissertation in political history. Previously, Dr. Chase has held postdoctoral fellowships with Southern Methodist University, Case Western Reserve University, and Rutgers University. His forthcoming manuscript, Civil Rights on the Cell Block: The Prisoners’ Rights Movement and the Construction of the Carceral State, 1945–1990, explores the roots of twentieth century prison growth, inmate society and the coercive relationship between keeper and kept, and the legal struggle between inmates and the state over race, prisoners’ rights, and questions of citizenship.