Biography
Education
Courses Taught
Selected Publications and Presentations
- The United States Army and Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (Louisiana State University Press, 1967; reprinted, Greenwood Press, 1980)
- Andrew Johnson and the Uses of Constitutional Power (Little, Brown, 1980)
- “The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson: A Century of Writing,” Civil War History XIV (1968): 120-47
- “Black Slaves, Red Masters, White Middlemen: A Congressional Debate of 1852,” Florida Historical Quarterly LI (1972):113-128. Reprinted in Joel Silbey, ed., The United States Congress in a Partisan Political Nation, 1841-1896 (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1991), Vol. I, pp. 251-267
- “Tribute Pennies and Tribute Clauses: Religion in the First Constitutions of Trans-Mississippi States, 1812-1912,” in Will Kramer, ed., The American West and the Religious Experience (Los Angeles, 1975), pp. 71-104.
- “Ulysses S. Grant,” in Leonard Levy and Louis Fisher, eds., Encyclopedia of the American Presidency (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), Vol. II, pp. 700-706
- “War and the Military in Photography” and “World War II: U.S. Naval Operations in the Pacific” in Oxford Companion to American Military History (Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 551-2, 835-7
- “From Atlanta to Anbar: Civil Government in Post-Combat Situations,” United States Naval War College, invited essay to accompany readings for the Senior Course, 2009
Research and Interests
James Sefton joined the History Department at California State University Northridge in 1965. He is currently the designated Pre-Law Advisor for history majors. He pioneered the development of two-hour tutorials to assist History graduate students and undergraduate majors in the improvement of their writing and public speaking skills. His current research focuses on naval operations in the Pacific during World War II, and on the historical background of modern constitutional controversies. As a documentary and fine art photographer, he has had several exhibitions in the CSUN Art Galleries and at California State University Bakersfield, Allan Hancock College, and the Berlin Academy of Fine Art. He has recently completed “Remote Roads: Photographs Along the Way,” a cultural study of the meanings of remoteness in a society that has become more and more electronically interconnected.