Dr. Alecia P. Long teaches courses on Louisiana History and the History of Sexuality at Louisiana State University. Her areas of research specialization include the history of Louisiana, especially New Orleans, and the intertwined histories of race, gender and sexuality in the United States. She is the author of The Great Southern Babylon: Sex, Race, and Respectability in New Orleans, 1865-1920, which explores the history of prostitution in New Orleans, particularly during the Storyville Era (1897-1917). In 2005 the book was awarded the Julia Cherry Spruill Prize for the best work published in Southern Women’s History. She is also the co-editor of the recently published volume Occupied Women: Gender, Military Occupation and the American Civil War. Long is currently at work on a cultural history and biography of Clay Shaw, the only person ever charged in an alleged conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination. For most Americans Shaw was and remains a suspicious and shadowy figure. Long’s biography, tentatively titled American Clay: The Secrets, Identities, and Life of Clay Lavergne Shaw, will challenge those perceptions and will shed new light on one man’s still relevant journey through the promises and perils of American life and culture in the 20th century.