Civil War Photography & History

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011, 6:00 pm
Martin E. Segal Theatre
The Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY (directions)

This is the third program of Still Hazy After All These Years, a series of public panels at the CUNY Graduate Center marking the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. In this program, a panel of noted art historians and historians addresses the persistence of photography’s influence over the vision of the Civil War, and what remains to be learned from the medium and the war’s visual record. Among other questions, the panelists will discuss photography’s impact on Americans’ perceptions of the conflict in the past and how the meanings and uses of the visualization of the war have changed over time.

Introductory remarks by Josh Brown: Download mp.3

• Martha A. Sandweiss, Princeton University
  Martha A. Sandweiss is professor of history at Princeton University. A former museum curator, National Endowment for the Humanities Research Scholar, and Beinecke Senior Research Fellow in History, she is author of Print the Legend: Photography and the American West (Yale University Press, 2002); Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line (Penguin Press, 2009); and editor of Photography in Nineteenth-Century America (Harry N. Abrams, 1991).

  Martha A. Sandweiss at the November 3rd panel: Listen on podcast page / Download mp.3

• Anthony Lee, Mount Holyoke College
  Anthony Lee is professor of art history at Mount Holyoke College. The recipient of the National Museum of American Art’s Charles C. Eldredge Prize for distinguished scholarship, he is author of Picturing Chinatown: Art and Orientalism in San Francisco (University of California Press, 2001); A Shoemaker’s Story (Princeton University Press, 2008); and coauthor of On Alexander Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War (University of California Press, 2008).

  Anthony Lee at the November 3rd panel: Listen on podcast page / Download mp.3

• Mary Niall Mitchell, University of New Orleans
  Mary Niall Mitchell is associate professor history at The University of New Orleans. Her scholarship focuses on race, slavery, and emancipation in the U.S. South. Mitchell is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. She is author of Raising Freedom’s Child: Black Children and Visions of the Future After Slavery (New York University Press, 2008).

  Mary Niall Mitchell at the November 3rd panel: Listen on podcast page / Download mp.3

• Deborah Willis, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University
  Deborah Willis is chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is the recipient of Fletcher, Guggenheim, and MacArthur fellowships, and is author of Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography (The New Press, 1994); Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present (W. W. Norton, 2009); and coauthor of A Small Nation of People: W.E.B. Du Bois and African-American Portraits of Progress (Amistad, 2003).

  Deborah Willis at the November 3rd panel: Listen on podcast page / Download mp.3

This question and answer session occurred after the panel presentations: Download mp.3

View video of this event.