Robert Bonner holds the Kathe Tappe Vernon Professorship in Biography, a post established in the wake of the singular, and now-defunct, Dartmouth College Department of Biography (1924-1967). Among Professor Bonner's works are three self-conscious ventures in "life writing." These are: The Soldiers Pen: Firsthand Impressions of the American Civil War (Hill and Wang); an in-progress collaborative digital project Life Stories of Black Georgians; and a forthcoming biographical study of Confederate Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens.

Professor Bonner has engaged in other genres of historical writing than biography. Most of this scholarship concerns the 19th century American slave South.  Colors and Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South (Princeton University Press), and Mastering America: Southern Slaveholders and the Crisis of American Nationhood (Cambridge University Press) each explore the phenomenon of "proslavery nationalism" that propelled the Confederate rebellion of 1861-65. As the 2020-21 Rogers Distinguished Fellow in 19^th Century American History, at San Marino's Huntington Library, he launched a monograph that establishes the international (and particularly the maritime) dimensions of Confederate meaning-making. The First Pariah State: How the Proslavery Confederacy Menaced the World will be published in 2026 by Princeton University Press.

Professor Bonner regularly offers his introductory History 1 class (mostly in the fall term) and his upper-level History 12 class (mostly in the spring term). He provides instructional support for the History London FSP program and rotates through a variety of other seminars and upper-level topics' classes.