Dr. Hirsch has been at Truman since 1989. He holds a B.A. from Antioch College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His special fields of interest are Twentieth Century American Intellectual and Cultural History, Public History, Oral History, Disability History, African-American History, and the South since Reconstruction. He is presently writing an intellectual and cultural history of the New Deal's Federal Writers' Project and conducting the research for a biography of B.A. Botkin, folklorist, poet, and social historian. He has published articles and written introductions to books on this and related topics. He is a member of the American Folklore Society, organization of American Historians, American Historical Society, Southern Historical Association, and the Society for Disability Studies.