Dr. Taylor’s research focuses on the social and cultural history of the U.S. South in the era of the Civil War and Emancipation.  Her first book, The Divided Family in Civil War America (UNC Press, 2005), explored the image and reality of families divided by national loyalties in the Civil War period.  Her current book project, Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the U.S. Civil War's Slave Refugee Camps (UNC Press, forthcoming), is a study of the many thousands of men, women, and children who fled slavery during the Civil War. It examines how their day-to-day experiences in military-sponsored “contraband” camps shaped the way emancipation unfolded in the United States. Professor Taylor’s work also engages the methods of digital history, as well as the questions surrounding memory and public history.  She is currently a member of the board of editors of the Journal of Southern History, an editorial advisory board member of the Civil War Monitor magazine, and the co-editor (with Stephen Berry) of the "UnCivil Wars" series with the University of Georgia Press.