2025 Summer Conference Faculty
William Blair is the Ferree Emeritus Professor of American History and Emeritus Director of the Richards Civil War Era Center at the Pennsylvania State University. He was the founding editor of The Journal of the Civil War Era. His books include The Record of Murders and Outrages: Racial violence and the Fight over Truth at the Dawn of Reconstruction (2021); With Malice Toward Some: Treason in the Civil War Era (2014), which was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize; 1861-1865, and Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865-1914 (2004). He is currently working on a book highlighting the lives of Black people who for nearly 100 years lived on the land that Americans know as Arlington Cemetery.
Andrew S. Bledsoe is Professor of History at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. He received his Ph.D. from Rice University in 2012, and he is a historian of the American Civil War and American military history. He is the author of Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War (LSU, 2015) and co-editor of Upon the Fields of Battle: Essays on the Military History of America’s Civil War (LSU Press, 2018). His most recent book, Decisions at Franklin: The Nineteen Critical Decisions that Defined the Battle, was published in 2023. In addition to teaching courses on the Civil War and military history, he leads a college seminar at the Chickamauga National Military Park. He has been a fellow at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, the United States Army Heritage and Education Center, the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library, and the Virginia Historical Society.
Keith Bohannon is a professor of history at the University of West Georgia in Carrollton, Georgia. He is the author of numerous essays and articles and is an experienced battlefield tour guide. His most recent scholarship includes an essay on General John Bell Hood at 2nd Manassas that will appear in Caroline Janney and Kathryn Shively, eds., The Second Manassas Campaign (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2025).
James J. Broomall is the William Binford Vest Chair in History at the University of Richmond. A cultural historian of the Civil War era with over twenty years of experience in the field, he has published works in Common Place: The Journal of Early American Life; Gettysburg Magazine; Ohio Valley History; Civil War Times; Civil War History; and The Journal of the Civil War Era. He co-edited with William A. Link, Rethinking American Emancipation: Legacies of Slavery and the Quest for Black Freedom (Cambridge University Press, 2016). The University of North Carolina Press published his book, Private Confederacies: The Emotional Worlds of Southern Men as Citizens and Soldiers, as part of the Civil War America series in 2019. He is currently working on a book project under contract with the University of North Carolina Press titled Battle Pieces: The Art and Artifacts of the American Civil War Era, which explores how historical imagery and military artifacts were used to create representations of violence, war, and death. Dr. Broomall is deeply invested in public history and has completed three major historic resource studies for the National Park Service.
David Brown teaches American history at the University of Manchester in the UK. His research interests include slavery and race in the American South, Anglo-American connections during the Civil War, and abolition in the Atlantic World. He has published articles in Civil War History, the Journal of Southern History, and Slavery and Abolition. His first book was Southern Outcast: Hinton Rowan Helper and The Impending Crisis of the South (Louisiana State University Press, 2006) and his latest, co-authored, book is A Concise American History (Routledge, 2020). His current book project provides the first study of a momentous, but forgotten, antislavery campaign in Britain during the American Civil War.
Kent Masterson Brown was born in Lexington, Kentucky on February 5, 1949. He is a 1971 graduate – and in 2014 named a distinguished graduate—of Centre College, and received his juris doctor degree in 1974 from Washington and Lee University School of Law. He practiced constitutional and administrative law for forty-seven years in Lexington, Kentucky, and for twenty-six years, as counsel to Webster, Chamberlain & Bean in Washington, DC. Kent has, throughout his career as a constitutional attorney, cultivated his avocation in history. As a battlefield preservationist, he helped form the Perryville Battlefield Association, and was appointed to serve as the Chairman of the Perryville Battlefield Commission by the Governor of Kentucky. He also had a Presidential appointment as Chairman of the Gettysburg National Military Park Advisory Commission and served on the Board of the Gettysburg Foundation. Additionally, he researches American history, writing books and articles for scholarly presentation, and gives speeches and tours at Civil War battlefields to the avid American Civil War audience. Kent was the creator and first editor of the national magazine, “The Civil War,” and is the author of five books, including Cushing of Gettysburg: The Story of a Union Artillery Commander (University Press of Kentucky, 1993); The Civil War in Kentucky; Battle for the Bluegrass State (Savas Beatie, 2000); Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign (University of North Carolina Press, 2005); and One of Morgan’s Men: The Memoirs of Lieutenant John M. Porter of the Ninth Kentucky Cavalry (University Press of Kentucky, 2011); The First Confederate Battle Flag: The Story of the Southern Cross (Pelican, 2014). All of Kent’s books have been selections of the History Book Club and Military Book Club. His books have received rave reviews and have been honored with numerous national awards. Kent has just completed Meade at Gettysburg: A Study in Command, for the University of North Carolina Press. It was released in June 2021, and has received four national awards. Starting in 2007, Kent extended his historical pursuits to writing, hosting, and producing eight award-winning documentary films for public and cable television, including:
- The Long Road Back to Kentucky: The 1862 Confederate Invasion;
- Bourbon and Kentucky: A History Distilled;
- Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign;
- Henry Clay and the Struggle for the Union;
- Unsung Hero: The Horse in the Civil War;
- Daniel Boone and the Opening of the American West;
- “I Remember the Old Home Very Well”: The Lincolns in Kentucky; and
- “In the Declaration, all men are created equal:” Abraham Lincoln in Illinois, 1830-1860.
- “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World:” The Coming of the American Revolution
Every one of Kent’s films has been recognized for excellence by being selected for the sought-after Telly Award; all are widely broadcast on public and cable television throughout the United States, Canada, and overseas. Kent is the president and content developer of the Witnessing History Education Foundation, Inc., a qualified IRS Section 501( c)(3) non-profit, tax exempt, corporation, the sole mission of which is to produce high quality documentary films on all aspects of American history for purposes of broadcast on public and cable television channels and other platforms all across the country and overseas. A nationally-known speaker, Kent currently is a member of the Kentucky American Independence Semiquincentennial Commission and the Kentucky Film Commission, both appointments by the governor of Kentucky.
Rich Condon is a public historian and Park Ranger from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. For over a decade he has held positions with a multitude of sites and organizations including The Battle of Franklin Trust, Flight 93 National Memorial, Catoctin Mountain Park, and the newly established Reconstruction Era National Historical Park, where he created some of the park’s earliest public programming. Rich has published articles in Civil War Times Magazine, The Civil War Monitor, The American Battlefield Trust, as well as Emerging Civil War, and manages the Civil War Pittsburgh online blog. He graduated from Shepherd University with a B.A. in Public History and is currently pursuing an M.A. in American History through Gettysburg College.
Andrew Dalton is Executive Director of the Adams County Historical Society and Beyond the Battle Museum. A 2019 graduate of Gettysburg College, he is the author of a book, Beyond the Run: The Emanuel Harmon Farm at Gettysburg (2013), as well as numerous journal articles and newspaper columns. His work as a historian and nonprofit executive has been featured in The Washington Post, National Geographic Magazine, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Harrisburg Patriot, and The Baltimore Sun, among other publications. From 2020-2023, Andrew spearheaded successful planning and fundraising efforts for the historical society’s $12 million debt-free capital campaign to build its new history center and museum in Gettysburg, which was recently voted Best New Museum in the United States by USA Today readers. Andrew is also Producer of the new Gettysburg Film Festival, an American History film festival launched and inspired by Ken Burns in 2023.
Doug Douds is a Marine faculty member at the U.S. Army War College where he directs the Advanced Strategic Art Program. He has served as a strategist and senior speechwriter for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Colonel Douds commanded a Marine F/A-18 squadron in Iraq. As pilot, he accrued over 3,000 flight hours, 340 aircraft carrier traps, and 135 combat missions over Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq and is a graduate of the Navy Fighter Weapons School (Top Gun). An avid writer and learner, he spent four years on the editorial board, two as Chairman, of Proceedings Magazine. Douds received two bachelors of arts degrees in political science and history from Wake Forest University, a masters from the Army War College, and holds a Doctorate in Military History from Leeds University, England. He has appeared as a subject matter expert on History Channel documentaries Grant, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, The Great War, FDR and D-Day. He is also a Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg, where he lives with his wife.
Justene Hill Edwards is an associate professor of history at the University of Virginia. A 2022 Andrew Carnegie Fellow and current Mellon New Directions Fellow, she is a specialist in African American history and her research examines Black economic life in America. She is the author of Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank (October 2024, W.W. Norton). Savings and Trust explores the rise and tragic failure of the Freedman’s Bank and considers the ways in which the bank’s collapse has shaped racial and economic inequality in America. She is also the author of Unfree Markets: The Slaves’ Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina. Always highlighting the lives of enslaved and formerly enslaved people, Hill Edwards studies the relationship between economic and political freedom for people of African descent in the United States.
Lorien Foote is the Patricia & Bookman Peters Professor in History at Texas A&M University. Her research focuses on the American Civil War and the field of War and Society. She received her PhD at the University of Oklahoma in 1999, and before coming to TAMU was a professor at the University of Central Arkansas. She is the author of four books, editor of three volumes, and writer of numerous articles and essays. Rites of Retaliation: Civilization, Soldiers, and Campaigns in the American Civil War (2021) was awarded the Organization of American Historians Civil War and Reconstruction Book Award; The Yankee Plague: Escaped Union Prisoners and the Collapse of the Confederacy (2016), was a 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title; and The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Manhood, Honor, and Violence in the Union Army (2010), was a finalist and Honorable Mention for the 2011 Lincoln Prize. She is the co-editor, with Earl J. Hess, of The Oxford Handbook of the American Civil War. She is the creator and principal investigator of a digital humanities project that is mapping the escape and movement of 3000 Federal prisoners of war. The project includes contributions from undergraduate researchers at four universities.
Zachery A. Fry is an associate professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command & General Staff College, Fort Belvoir, and the author of A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Potomac (University of North Carolina Press, 2020). He taught history previously at the U.S. Military Academy West Point. Fry's research focuses on politics in Civil War armies, and his work has received the Coffman Prize from the Society for Military History, the Hay-Nicolay Prize from the Abraham Lincoln Institute / Abraham Lincoln Association, and the Hubbell Prize from Civil War History.
Gary W. Gallagher received his B.A. from Adams State College of Colorado (1972) and his M.A. (1977) and Ph.D. (1982) from the University of Texas at Austin. He began his academic career in 1986 at Penn State University, where he taught for twelve years. In 1998, he joined the faculty of the University of Virginia and held the John L. Nau III Professorship in the History of the American Civil War and served as the founding Director of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History. He is the author or editor of more than fifty books, including The Confederate War (Harvard University Press, 1997), Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know About the Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2008), The Union War (Harvard, 2011), The American War: A History of the Civil War Era (co-authored with Joan Waugh; Spielvogel Books, 3rd ed., 2023), and The Enduring Civil War: Reflections on the Great American Crisis (Louisiana State University Press, 2020). He has served as editor of three book series at the University of North Carolina Press ("Civil War America," with more than 115 titles; “Military Campaigns of the Civil War,” 10 titles; and “The Littlefield History of the Civil War Era,” 15 titles) and appeared regularly on the Arts and Entertainment Network's series "Civil War Journal" as well as participating in more than five dozen other television projects in the field. He held the Cavaliers’ Distinguished Teaching Professorship in 2010-2012 (the highest teaching award conveyed by the University of Virginia) and won the Philip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni in 2013. Active in the field of historic preservation, he was president from 1987 to mid-1994 of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites and also served as a member of the Board of the Civil War Trust (now the American Battlefield Trust).
Sarah E. Gardner is Distinguished University Professor at Mercer University, in Macon Georgia. She is the author of Blood and Irony, White Women's Narratives of the Civil War, 1861-1937 (UNC Press) and of Reviewing the South: The Literary Marketplace and the Southern Renaissance, 1920-1941 (Cambridge University Press.) In 2021 she delivered the 2021 Steven and Janice Brose Distinguished Lecture Series at Penn State. She has published widely on nineteenth-century cultural and intellectual history and on the American literary marketplace more widely. She is currently finishing a book manuscript on reading during the American Civil War.
Joseph T. Glatthaar is Stephenson Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is author of numerous books and articles, including: The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns (New York University Press, 1985), Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and Their White Officers (The Free Press, 1989), Partners in Command: Relationships Between Leaders in the Civil War (The Free Press, 1994), Forgotten Allies: The Oneida Indians in the American Revolution (Hill & Wang, 2007) with James Kirby Martin, General Lee’s Army: From Victory To Defeat (The Free Press, 2008), Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia: A Portrait of the Troops Who Served under Robert E. Lee (University of North Carolina Press, 2011), and American Military History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2020) . He has taught at U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, U.S. Army War College, U.S. Military Academy, and U.S. Air Force Academy. He is past President of the Society for Military History and the recipient of the Samuel Eliot Morrison Award for lifetime achievement in military history.
Wilson Greene enjoyed a 44-year career in public history. He served 16 years with the National Park Service at sites such as Petersburg National Battlefield and Fredericksburg National Military Park. Greene was one of the founders of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites (now the American Battlefield Trust) and was its first executive director. He was the founding executive director of Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier, retiring in 2017. Greene is the author of six books and more than two dozen articles and essays focusing on the Civil War in the Eastern Theater. His latest project is a multi-volume history of the Petersburg Campaign. The University of North Carolina Press published Volume 1, A Campaign of Giants, in 2018 and will publish Volume 2 in April 2025. Greene holds degrees in American History from Florida State University and Louisiana State University and resides in Walden, Tennessee.
Phillip S. Greenwalt is a full-time contributor to Emerging Civil War and co-founder of the Emerging Revolutionary War era blog. He is the author or co-author of six books on the American Revolution and Civil Wars. He holds a bachelor's degree in history from Wheeling Jesuit University and graduate degrees in American history from George Mason University and International Affairs and Global Leadership from Arizona State University. He has worked for the National Park Service for 18 years, serving at sites such as Everglades National Park, Fort McHenry National Monument & Historic Shrine, George Washington Birthplace National Monument, Morristown National Historical Park, and Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, among other units. He is a native of Baltimore, Maryland.
Scott Hartwig was the supervisory park historian at Gettysburg National Military Park and retired in 2014 after a 34-year career in the National Park Service, nearly all of it spent at Gettysburg. He won the regional Freeman Tilden Award for excellence in interpretation in 1993, and was a key player for the design of all aspects of the current Gettysburg museum/visitor center. He is the author of To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign from September 3 to September 16, published in September 2012 by Johns Hopkins University Press, and of I Dread The Thought of the Place: The Battle of Antietam and End of the Maryland Campaign, also published by Johns Hopkins in August 2023.
Caroline E. Janney is the John L. Nau III Professor of the American Civil War and Director of the John L. Nau Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia. A graduate of the University of Virginia, she worked as a historian for the National Park Service and taught at Purdue University before returning to UVA in 2018. An active public lecturer, she has given presentations at locations across the globe. She is the past president of the Society of Civil War Historians and a series editor for the University of North Carolina Press’s Civil War America series. She has published nine books, including Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (2013) and Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox (2021) winner of the 2022 Lincoln Prize.
Dr. Christian B. Keller has been Professor of History in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the United States Army War College, Carlisle, PA, since 2011, where he teaches courses for senior leaders on the theory of war and strategy, national security policy and strategy, and the American Civil War. He is the author, co-author, or editor of six books, including The Great Partnership: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and the Fate of the Confederacy (Pegasus Books, 2019), which won the 2020 Douglas Southall Freeman History Award and was a finalist for the 2019 Gilder Lehrman Best Book in Military History. His most recent work, Southern Strategies: Why the Confederacy Failed, was published by the University Press of Kansas in 2021. He is currently finishing a new book entitled Take-Aways: The Practical Uses of Civil War History, which explains why modern leaders and citizens should care about the war and its insights about decision-making. A selection of recorded public appearances, radio interviews, and podcasts may be found at www.christianbkeller.com.
Andrew F. Lang is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University. He is the author of A Contest of Civilizations: Exposing the Crisis of American Exceptionalism in the Civil War Era (UNC Press, 2021), which listed as a finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. His first book, In the Wake of War: Military Occupation, Emancipation, and Civil War America (LSU Press, 2017), received the Society of Civil War Historians' Tom Watson Brown Book Award. He is currently writing two books: one of Abraham Lincoln's concepts of gratitude and the American Union, and the other on the relationship between Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.
Kevin M. Levin is a historian and educator based in Boston. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the Civil War, including Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth. He is currently finishing up a biography of Col. Robert Gould Shaw, which will be published by the University of North Carolina Press. You can find his online writing at his Substack: https://kevinmlevin.substack.com/.
Ashley Whitehead Luskey is the Assistant Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, where she teaches courses in Public History, works with Gettysburg College students on a variety of original research-based Civil War and public history projects, coordinates the annual CWI summer conference, and gives tours of the battlefield to visitors. She also sits on the Board of the Lincoln Fellowship of Pennsylvania. Ashley received her B.A. in History from the College of William and Mary, and holds both an M.A. in History, with a concentration in Public History, and a Ph.D in nineteenth-century American history from West Virginia University. Her academic interests focus on the long Civil War era, Southern history, cultural history, public history, and the intersection of history & memory. Prior to her arrival at CWI, Dr. Luskey worked for ten years with the National Park Service, including eight years as a park ranger and historian at Richmond National Battlefield Park. She has delivered numerous interpretive tours, lectures, and scholarly papers at educational institutions and public venues across the country, and has written articles on a variety of Civil War and public history-related topics for various magazines, journals, and blogs. She is the co-author of “From Women’s History to Gender History: Revamping Interpretation at Richmond National Battlefield Park,” which was published in the June 2016 issue of Civil War History. She is currently revising a manuscript tentatively entitled The Last Confederate Christmas: Leading Ladies, Social Politics, and Power in the Confederate Capital for publication.
Brian P. Luskey is professor of history at West Virginia University. He is the author of On the Make: Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century America (2010) and Men Is Cheap: Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil War America (2020). He teaches courses on antebellum and Civil War America, P. T. Barnum, and Abraham Lincoln, and is now doing research in the voluminous archive produced by U. S. War Department operative Lafayette C. Baker in order to tell some good detective stories about ordinary Americans caught up in Baker’s dragnet.
Jennifer M. Murray is a Civil War historian in the Department of History at Oklahoma State University. Murray’s most recent publication is On A Great Battlefield: The Making, Management, and Memory of Gettysburg National Military Park, 1933-2013, published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2014, with an updated version that includes a new preface released in the summer of 2023. She is currently working on a full-length biography of George Gordon Meade, tentatively titled Meade at War. Murray is the co-editor of the forthcoming (late 2025), “They Are Dead, And Yet They Live”: Civil War Memories in a Polarized America, published with University of Nebraska Press. Murray is a veteran faculty member at Gettysburg College’s Civil War Institute and a coveted speaker at Civil War symposiums and roundtables across the nation. A Maryland native, Murray worked as a seasonal interpretive park ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park for nine summers.
Rachael Barbara Nicholas is a PhD candidate studying nineteenth-century American history at West Virginia University. She has a B.A in History and Classics from Ohio Wesleyan University (2016) and an M.A. in Public History from West Virginia University (2019). Rachael has worked for the Kentucky Historical Society, the West Virginia Humanities Council, the National Digital Newspaper Program, and West Virginia University. She was previously a ranger with the Interpretation Division at Gettysburg National Military Park. She is now a park historian. Rachael has written for blogs as well as journals. Her most recent paper, "Slave-Stealers and Careless Masters: A Documentary Analysis of Active and Passive Subversions of Slavery in the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition," was published in the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society (2022). She was also the recipient of the Best Graduate Student Paper Prize at the Society of Civil War Historians Conference (2024) for her paper entitled, "'Virginia Shall Not Call in Vain': Perceptions of Slavery and Freedom and their Impact on Black Movement during the Maryland Campaign."
Timothy J. Orr is Associate Professor of Military History at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. He received his bachelor’s degree at Gettysburg College and his Ph.D. at the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of several essays about the Army of the Potomac, and also the editor of Last to Leave the Field: The Life and Letters of First Sergeant Ambrose Henry Hayward (2011), the author of the three-volume Battle of Gettysburg Series by Osprey Publishing (2022-2024), and the co-author of the national bestseller Never Call Me a Hero: A Legendary American Dive-Bomber Pilot Remembers the Battle of Midway (2017). His current book project is entitled, No Routine Flights: U.S. Navy Dive-Bomber Pilot Donald Kirkpatrick, Jr. and the Pacific War. For eight years, Dr. Orr worked as a seasonal park ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park. He has also appeared on several television shows, including Who Do You Think You Are? (TLC), Battle of Midway: The True Story (Smithsonian Channel), The Greatest Events of World War II in Colour (Netflix), and Attack on Pearl Harbor: Minute by Minute (Netflix).
Beth Parnicza is a public historian who has lived and studied Virginia's Civil War sites for over 10 years. Beth graduated from West Virginia University in 2011, where she studied under Dr. Peter Carmichael. Beth's research delves into cultural and military history, and she has written articles on the Battle of Fredericksburg, discussing emancipation with visitors, and an immediate postwar incident in Fredericksburg that reveals complexities of early Reconstruction. Her current research and writing project focuses on the Looting of Fredericksburg, Virginia before the December 1862 battle. She has held several positions with the National Park Service at a variety of historical and cultural sites, and she currently serves as the Branch Manager of Interpretation and Education at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Battlefields National Military Park.
Steve T. Phan is the Chief of Interpretation at Camp Nelson National Monument. He recently served as a park ranger and historian at the Civil War Defenses of Washington. He has also worked at Gettysburg National Military Park, Richmond National Battlefield Park, Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, Stones River National Battlefield, Rock Creek Park, and Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument. A military history scholar of the Civil War era, Phan’s research focuses on military occupation, operational command, African American soldiers and refugees, and fortifications during the Civil War. He is the author of articles about Asians and Pacific Islanders in the Civil War and the Defenses of Washington for numerous publications. He was nominated for the National Park Service Tilden Award for Excellence in Interpretation in 2019 and 2020. He holds a master’s degree in American History from Middle Tennessee State University.
Dana B. Shoaf is the Director of Interpretation at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, where he is helping direct the redesign and reinterpretation of all of the Museum's galleries. He can be seen on YouTube representing the NMCWM and also in partnership with the Gettysburg Foundation. Prior to joining the Museum in November 2023, he served for 15 years as the editor and public face of Civil War Times magazine. He has spent his life pursuing his historical passions. After graduate school, Shoaf began his career working for Time-Life, Inc., as a writer and researcher on the Voices of the Civil War series and has published articles and essays on Civil War topics. His most recent essay, "'Let the Son of a Bitch Die': An Abandoned Graveyard Reveals a Sad Story of Murder," was published in Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves by the University of Georgia Press. A frequent speaker at conferences and seminars, Shoaf has been interviewed on National Public Radio and appeared on C-Span. He has been invited to serve as a consultant for a number of projects for the National Archives, the Smithsonian Institution, the Washington Post, and the National Park Service. He has spoken at the Lincoln Forum and led battlefield tours for organizations such as the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War at Shepherd University and Gettysburg College's Civil War Institute. Shoaf is also an avid student and collector of Civil War and 19th-century occupational photography, and frequently uses his images in his presentations. He and his wife restored and sold an 1830s stone house, and they are currently restoring another stone house build in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, where they reside with three indulged cats and a doted-upon dog.
Jill Ogline Titus is interim director of the Civil War Institute and interim program director of the Civil War Era Studies minor, as well as co-coordinator of Gettysburg’s Public History minor. She is author of two books: Gettysburg 1963: Civil Rights, Cold War Politics, and Historical Memory in America’s Most Famous Small Town (UNC Press, 2021), winner of the Willie Lee Rose Prize, and Brown’s Battleground: Students, Segregationists, and the Struggle for Justice in Prince Edward County (UNC Press, 2011), which was a finalist for the Library of Virginia Literary Award. Her current project is an exploration of Gettysburg’s New Deal- era Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps.
Elizabeth R. Varon is Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia and a member of the executive council of UVA's John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History. Varon grew up in northern Virginia and attended Swarthmore College for her B.A. and Yale University for her Ph.D. She has taught at Wellesley College and Oxford University. She is the author of six books, including Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War, which won the 2020 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. Her most recent book Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South (Simon & Schuster, 2023) was reviewed in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Atlantic and Guardian. The book has won the inaugural American Battlefield Trust Prize and the Library of Virginia Literary Award, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times biography prize, among other honors. Varon's current project is a biography of humanitarian Clara Barton.
Joan Waugh is Professor Emerita of the UCLA History Department researches and writes about nineteenth-century America, specializing in the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Gilded Age eras. Waugh has published numerous essays and books on Civil War and Gilded Age topics, including U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (2009) and The American War: A History of the Civil War Era (2015; 2nd edition, 2019) co-authored with Gary W. Gallagher. Other books include Unsentimental Reformer: The Life of Josephine Shaw Lowell (1998); The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture (2005), and Wars Within a War: Controversy and Conflict Over the American Civil War (2009). President of the Society of Civil War Historians from 2020-2022, Waugh is often invited to give public lectures about the Civil War. She has been interviewed for many documentaries, including the PBS series, “American Experience” on Ulysses S. Grant and the History Channel’s production of “Lee and Grant” (2011). In addition to seminars, Dr. Waugh taught the “Civil War and Reconstruction,” and “Gilded Age America, 1865-1900” lecture courses, and has been honored with three teaching prizes, including UCLA’s prestigious Distinguished Teaching Award. She was appointed a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar from 2021-2023. Waugh’s current project include an exploration of the nature of U.S. Grant’s surrender policy during the Civil War.