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American Social History Project • Center for Media and Learning

Civil War Summer Institutes

Since 2012, ASHP/CML has hosted National Endowment for the Humanities-sponsored Summer Institutes for college and university faculty on the visual culture of the American Civil War. The two-week institutes take place at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and New York City historical and cultural institutions. The institute focuses on the era’s array of visual media— including the fine arts, ephemera, photography, cartoons, and monuments—to examine how information and opinion about the war and its impact were recorded and disseminated, and the ways visual media expressed and shaped Americans’ views on both sides of the conflict.

Participants are selected through a competitive application process. They attend day-long seminars led by nationally-recognized scholars in the fields of American history, art history, and American visual culture, including hands-on workshops held at major museums and archives. The goal of the institute is to introduce faculty to the rich body of new scholarship on the Civil War and postwar visual culture, and to help them use visual evidence to enhance their scholarship and teaching about the war and its short- and long-term effects.

Visual Culture of the American Civil War Faculty, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2021

  • Jermaine Archer, Associate Professor of American Studies and African-American History at the State University of New York College at Old Westbury.
  • Jeanie Attie, Chair and Associate Professor of History at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University.
  • Georgia Barnhill, Curator of Graphic Arts Emerita at the American Antiquarian Society.
  • Lynne Bassett, Independent scholar specializing in historic costume and textiles.
  • Amanda Bellows, Lecturer in History at The New School and Hunter College, CUNY.
  • Louise Bernard, Director of Museum, Obama Presidential Library.
  • Joshua Brown, Executive Director of the American Social History Project and Professor of History at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
  • Sarah Burns, Ruth N. Halls Professor of the History of Art (emerita) at Indiana University.
  • Keith Davis, Curator of Photography at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
  • Gregory Downs, Professor of History at the University of California, Davis.
  • Alice Fahs, Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine.
  • Matthew Fox-Amato, Assistant Professor of History, University of Idaho.
  • Amanda Frisken, Professor of American Studies at the State University of New York College at Old Westbury.
  • Ellen Gruber Garvey, Cultural historian and Professor of English at New Jersey City University.
  • Thavolia Glymph, Associate Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Duke University.
  • Lauren Hewes, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts at the American Antiquarian Society.
  • Harold Holzer, Chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation, and authority on Abraham Lincoln and the political culture of the Civil War era.
  • David Jaffee (1954-2017), Professor and Director of New Media at the Bard Graduate Center.
  • Dominique Jean-Louis, Curatorial Project Historian, New-York Historical Society.
  • Ari Kelman, Chancellor's Leadership Professor of History at the University of California, Davis.
  • Barbara Krauthamer, Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
  • Allison Lange, Associate Professor of History at Wentworth Institute of Technology.
  • Anthony Lee, Professor of Art History at Mount Holyoke College.
  • Bruce Levine, J. G. Randall Distinguished Professor of History (emeritus) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
  • Turkiya Lowe, National Chief Historian, National Parks Service.
  • Louis Masur, Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University.
  • Maurie McInnis, President of State University of New York at Stony Brook.
  • Cynthia Mills (1947-2014), Former Executive Editor of American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
  • Mary Niall Mitchell, Associate Professor of History at the University of New Orleans.
  • Megan Kate Nelson, Lecturer in history and literature.
  • Kirk Savage, Professor of the History of U.S. Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh.
  • Susan Schulten, Professor and Chair of the History Department at the University of Denver.
  • Scott Manning Stevens, Associate Professor and Director of Native American Studies at Syracuse University.
  • Donna Thompson Ray, Project Director, American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, The Graduate Center CUNY.
  • Richard Samuel West, Independent scholar of nineteenth-century cartoons.
  • Deborah Willis, University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
  • Dell Upton, Professor of Architectual History (Emeritus) at University of California, Los Angeles.
  • Peter Wood, Professor of History (Emeritus) at Duke University.