The American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at the City University of New York Graduate Center will host a two-week NEH Summer Institute for 25 college and university faculty to study the visual culture of the American Civil War and Its aftermath​.

Deadline: Friday, March 3, 2023

The institute will focus on the era’s array of visual media–including paintings, sculpture, prints, photographs, cartoons, illustrated newspapers, maps, ephemera and monuments–to examine how information and opinion about the war and its aftermath was recorded and disseminated, and the ways visual media expressed and shaped Americans’ views on both sides of and before and after the conflict.

 

Participants will hear lectures by noted historians, art historians, and archivists and attend hands-on sessions in major museums and archives.  A team of three institute faculty that represents the range of work in the field will introduce participants to the rich body of new scholarship that addresses or incorporates Civil War and postwar visual culture, prompt them to do further research, and help them to use visual evidence to enhance their scholarship and teaching about the war and its short-and long-term effects.

 

Faculty and visiting speakers include:  Louise Bernard,  Michele Bogart, Joshua Brown, Sarah Burns, Gregory Downs, Matthew Fox-Amato, Aston Gonzalez, Hilary N. Green, Lauren Hewes, Dominique Jean-Louis,  Turkiya Lowe,  Amy Mooney, Donna Thompson Ray, Susan Schulten, Scott Manning Stevens, and Heather Andrea Williams.

 

While scholars and teachers specializing in U.S. history, American studies, and art history will find the institute especially attractive, we encourage applicants from any field who are interested in the Civil War and Reconstruction era and its visual culture, regardless of your disciplinary interests. Independent scholars, scholars engaged in museum work or full-time graduate studies are also urged to apply.

 

Full details and application information are available on the ASHP/CML Institute website.​

NOTE:  NEH Summer Scholars will receive the NEH-stipulated stipend of $2,200 to cover their expenses during the institute. The first check will be paid during the first week and the second during the final week. (Payment will require completing a W9 form, including your Social Security number, and taxes will apply to this stipend.)  Stipends are intended to help cover books and other research expenses, and ordinary living expenses.  Applicants should note that supplements will not be given in cases where the stipend is insufficient to cover all expenses.

Institute participants are required to attend all meetings and to engage fully as professionals in the work of the program.  Partcipants who, for any reason, do not complete the full tenure of the program must refund a pro-rata portion of the stipend.

 

The Visual Culture of the American Civil War and Its Aftermath has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom.​