D. at Boston University. He is the author of Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites of Nationalism in the Early Republic (1997) and co-editor of The Correspondence of John Cotton, Jr. (2009). Before coming to UMass Dartmouth, Travers worked at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. He conducts a seminar at UMass Dartmouth on the subject of nineteenth-century New Bedford. His current research focuses on a little-known and mysterious incident of the French and Indian War, concerning the fate of an unfortunate company of young Massachusetts men, which included some from the New Bedford area.