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.

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, 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.

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.