The Knoxville News-Sentinel reports that Aaron Astor '95 taught a special Civil War history class at Maryville College in Maryville, Tenn. This is an experiential learning class for 11 sophomores and juniors during a three week "J-term." They travel to see where battles and other war-related events took place and have visited Knoxville, the Abraham Lincoln Museum in Cumberland Gap, Stones River Battlefield in Murfreesboro, Franklin, Nashville, Fort Donelson, Parkers Crossroads, Fort Pillow and Shiloh Battlefield.
Astor has been a professor at Maryville since 2007. He has had a focus on the war experience in the border South states of Kentucky and Missouri and has a book coming out in spring 2012 with LSU Press titled Rebels on the Border: Civil War, Emancipation and the Reconstruction of Kentucky and Missouri.
Astor graduated from Hamilton with a concentration in philosophy and a minor in government. A member of Theta Delta Chi, he studied abroad at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland for a year and while abroad, acquired an interest in Scotland's past. After graduating Astor worked in the business world until he decided to go back to school. He received his master's degree and doctorate in history from Northwestern University. His father, Mark B. Astor, graduated from Hamilton in 1966.
