Steele Brand is Professor of History at Cairn University’s Politics, Philosophy, and History program, where he teaches courses in history and political thought, spanning from the ancient Near East to the early modern period. He also taught military history courses at the University of Texas-Austin. Brand received his Ph.D. from Baylor University and his M.A.Th. from Southwestern Seminary. He previously served as the Director of Undergraduate Fellows for the Clements Center for National Security and as a tactical intelligence officer.
Brand’s research focuses on the relationship between farming, citizenship, and soldiering. Constitutional polities—especially premodern, agrarian republics—cultivated a unique set of virtues and a deadly form of civic militarism that created tough citizens who were as involved in politics as they were proficient at defending their political system. Brand has written on these themes in his book, Killing for the Republic: Citizen-Soldiers and the Roman Way of War (Johns Hopkins, 2019). He has also published articles in journals such as Religions and Humanitas about how this premodern ideal of citizen-soldiers has informed and inspired modern republics, particularly the United States.
His teaching explores how the public life of the spirit binds people together within a polity. His classes also emphasize how these polities or collections of polities (civilizations) intersect in the great diplomatic and military events of history. And because the lives of specific individuals so often reflect and define this broader narrative, he uses anecdotes, primary source readings, and film to illuminate how certain men and women—often unexpectedly—directed the course of their people’s story.
