Many Wests Book Manuscript Workshop with Elaine Nelson
Many Wests Talk with Elaine Nelson
Writing Group
Tony Kaye Symposium
Workshop #7: Tony Frazier
Writing Group
Workshop #6: KT Shively
Writing Group
Workshop #5: Courtney Murray
Writing Group
Writing Group
Professional Development Series #5: Mock Zoom Interviews with Ed Green & Nicole Viglini
Workshop #4: Hope McCaffrey
Writing Group
Writing Group
Brose Lecture #3 with Ari Kelman
“Too Soon? Is it Time Already to Consider What the Civil War Sesquicentennial Can Tell Us About Our Past and Present?”
Ari Kelman will discuss the nation’s effort to grapple with the lingering impact of the Civil War around the 150th anniversary of the conflict.
The final lecture, on Saturday, is titled “Did Reconstruction Have a Sesquicentennial?“
Ari Kelman is Chancellor’s Leadership Professor of History and Faculty Advisor to the Chancellor and Provost at the University of California, Davis. He is the author, most recently, of Battle Lines: A Graphic History of the Civil War (Hill and Wang, 2015), as well as A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek (Harvard University Press, 2013), recipient of several national awards and honors, including the Bancroft Prize, and A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans (University of California Press, 2003), which won the Abbott Lowell Cummings Prize. Kelman’s essays and articles have appeared in Slate, The New York Times, The Nation, The Times Literary Supplement, The Journal of American History, Reviews in American History, and many other publications. Kelman has contributed to outreach endeavors aimed at K-12 educators, and to public history projects, including documentary films for the History Channel and PBS’s American Experience series. He has received many grants and fellowships, including from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Huntington Library; served on a variety of editorial boards, program and prize committees; and held several administrative posts. He is now working on a book titled, For Liberty and Empire: How the Civil War Bled into the Indian Wars and editing the journal Reviews in American History.
Professional Development Series #4: Working with Editors with Mark Simpson-Vos
Brose Lecture #2 with Ari Kelman
“Too Soon? Is it Time Already to Consider What the Civil War Sesquicentennial Can Tell Us About Our Past and Present?”
Ari Kelman will discuss the nation’s effort to grapple with the lingering impact of the Civil War around the 150th anniversary of the conflict.
The second lecture, on Friday, is titled “Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Civil War.”
Ari Kelman is Chancellor’s Leadership Professor of History and Faculty Advisor to the Chancellor and Provost at the University of California, Davis. He is the author, most recently, of Battle Lines: A Graphic History of the Civil War (Hill and Wang, 2015), as well as A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek (Harvard University Press, 2013), recipient of several national awards and honors, including the Bancroft Prize, and A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans (University of California Press, 2003), which won the Abbott Lowell Cummings Prize. Kelman’s essays and articles have appeared in Slate, The New York Times, The Nation, The Times Literary Supplement, The Journal of American History, Reviews in American History, and many other publications. Kelman has contributed to outreach endeavors aimed at K-12 educators, and to public history projects, including documentary films for the History Channel and PBS’s American Experience series. He has received many grants and fellowships, including from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Huntington Library; served on a variety of editorial boards, program and prize committees; and held several administrative posts. He is now working on a book titled, For Liberty and Empire: How the Civil War Bled into the Indian Wars and editing the journal Reviews in American History.
Brose Lecture #1 with Ari Kelman
“Too Soon? Is it Time Already to Consider What the Civil War Sesquicentennial Can Tell Us About Our Past and Present?”
Ari Kelman will discuss the nation’s effort to grapple with the lingering impact of the Civil War around the 150th anniversary of the conflict.
The first lecture, on Thursday, is titled “‘Disunion’: What the Paper of Record Taught Us About the Civil War.”
Ari Kelman is Chancellor’s Leadership Professor of History and Faculty Advisor to the Chancellor and Provost at the University of California, Davis. He is the author, most recently, of Battle Lines: A Graphic History of the Civil War (Hill and Wang, 2015), as well as A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek (Harvard University Press, 2013), recipient of several national awards and honors, including the Bancroft Prize, and A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans (University of California Press, 2003), which won the Abbott Lowell Cummings Prize. Kelman’s essays and articles have appeared in Slate, The New York Times, The Nation, The Times Literary Supplement, The Journal of American History, Reviews in American History, and many other publications. Kelman has contributed to outreach endeavors aimed at K-12 educators, and to public history projects, including documentary films for the History Channel and PBS’s American Experience series. He has received many grants and fellowships, including from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Huntington Library; served on a variety of editorial boards, program and prize committees; and held several administrative posts. He is now working on a book titled, For Liberty and Empire: How the Civil War Bled into the Indian Wars and editing the journal Reviews in American History.
Writing Group
Professional Development Series #3: Public-Facing Books with Megan Kate Nelson & Lindsay Chervinsky
Workshop #3: Adam Malka
Writing Group
Manuscript Workshop for Cathleen Cahill with Beth Lew-Williams
Writing Group
Writing Group
Workshop #2: Cassie Good
Writing Group
Workshop #1: Adam McNeil
Central PA Civil War Roundtable with KT Shively
“I am Far from Reconstructed”: Jubal A. Early in Exile, 1865–1869
The inaugural Mark and Ann Persun Visiting Scholar Lecture featuring KT Shively, Associate Professor of History, Virginia Commonwealth University.
This lecture is free and open to the public. Sponsored by the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center, Penn State, and the Central Pennsylvania Civil War Roundtable.
Talk Abstract:
Approximately 10,000 former Confederates fled the South following Confederate defeat, including General Jubal A. Early. Early had attracted particular notoriety among Confederate generals for issuing ransom or raze orders when his soldiers invaded the North in 1863 and 1864 and feared he might be hanged for war crimes. From 1865 to 1869, Early traveled to Mexico, the Caribbean, and Canada, reinventing himself from a disgraced Confederate general to a renowned historian of the Civil War. This roundtable talk will explore Early’s itinerant experiences and his influence on the telling of Civil War history, as well as offering a broader look at early Confederate expatriates.
Bio:
Kathryn “KT” Shively is an associate professor of Civil War and Reconstruction history at Virginia Commonwealth University with specialties in early American military, environmental, and medical history. They are the author of Nature’s Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia (University of North Carolina Press, 2013) and co-editor with Caroline Janney of the forthcoming volume, The Second Manassas Campaign (UNC Press, expected 2025). They also serve as co-PI with Paul Quigley (Virginia Tech) on the NEH-funded public history project, “Experiencing Civil War History Through Augmented Reality: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Environment at Pamplin Historical Park.” Their second monograph, History Wars: Jubal A. Early and the Confederate Origins of Modern American History, is under contract with University of Georgia Press for submission in 2025. Their favorite part of being a Civil War historian is giving battlefield tours, and they spend their non-working hours hosting bluegrass jams, making pies, hiking, and reading with their kid.
This publication is available in alternative media on request. Penn State is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer, and is committed to providing employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status. Penn State encourages qualified persons with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you anticipate needing any type of accommodation or have questions about the physical access provided, please contact the Richards Center at richardscenter@psu.edu, in advance of your participation or visit.
Writing Group
Brown Bag Lunch: Meet the Fellows 2024–2025
Professional Development Series #1: Crafting Book Proposals with Susan Ferber, Oxford University Press
Professional Development Series #2: Job Letters & CVs with Ed Green & Nicole Viglini
Manuscript Workshop #6 with Jacob Lee, Associate Professor of History, Penn State
Writing Group
Many Wests Conference
Many Wests Conference
Writing Group
Final Brose Lecture featuring Thavolia Glymph, Professor of History and Law at Duke University
Dr. Thavolia Glymph, Peabody Family Distinguished Professor of History and Professor of Law at Duke University, will deliver three lectures on “Playing ‘Dixie’ in Egypt: A Transnational Transcript of Race, Nation, Empire and Citizenship,” for the Steven and Janice Brose Distinguished Lecture Series. Taking place on April 18, 19, and 20, the lectures are free and open to the public. This lecture series is sponsored by the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at Penn State through the generosity of an endowment by Steven and Janice Brose and cosponsored by the Penn State University Libraries.
The third and final Brose Lecture will be held on Saturday, April 20, at 11:30 a.m., Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library: “Egypt in the American Imaginary and the making of an American Archive of Race and Nation.”
“Playing ‘Dixie’ in Egypt: A Transnational Transcript of Race, Nation, Empire and Citizenship” is a study of white Union and Confederate soldiers who joined the Egyptian army of the Khedive Isma’il after the Civil War. It explores why they left the U.S. to become mercenaries of a foreign army and, more centrally, the part they played in making and transcribing notions of race, citizenship, nation, and empire globally and at home. In Egypt, the American Civil War veterans joined an international force of mercenaries, diplomats, explorers, antiquities seekers, journalists, representatives of geographical societies, arms dealers, and tourists, many of whom, like them, were engaged in the fight against the imagined “horrors of racial equality.” In this work, they had the support of the U.S. government— from the White House to Congress and the U.S. Army—and the applause of their communities. When the last of them returned home, Reconstruction was over, and they could say they had played a part in its overthrow.
Second Brose Lecture featuring Thavolia Glymph, Professor of History and Law at Duke University
Dr. Thavolia Glymph, Peabody Family Distinguished Professor of History and Professor of Law at Duke University, will deliver three lectures on “Playing ‘Dixie’ in Egypt: A Transnational Transcript of Race, Nation, Empire and Citizenship,” for the 2023 Steven and Janice Brose Distinguished Lecture Series. Taking place on April 18, 19, and 20, the lectures are free and open to the public. This lecture series is sponsored by the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at Penn State through the generosity of an endowment by Steven and Janice Brose and cosponsored by the Penn State University Libraries.
The second Brose Lecture will be held on Friday, April 19, at 5 p.m., Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library: Playing “Dixie” in the Wilds of Africa.
“Playing ‘Dixie’ in Egypt: A Transnational Transcript of Race, Nation, Empire and Citizenship” is a study of white Union and Confederate soldiers who joined the Egyptian army of the Khedive Isma’il after the Civil War. It explores why they left the U.S. to become mercenaries of a foreign army and, more centrally, the part they played in making and transcribing notions of race, citizenship, nation, and empire globally and at home. In Egypt, the American Civil War veterans joined an international force of mercenaries, diplomats, explorers, antiquities seekers, journalists, representatives of geographical societies, arms dealers, and tourists, many of whom, like them, were engaged in the fight against the imagined “horrors of racial equality.” In this work, they had the support of the U.S. government— from the White House to Congress and the U.S. Army—and the applause of their communities. When the last of them returned home, Reconstruction was over, and they could say they had played a part in its overthrow.
Steven and Janice Brose Distinguished Lecture Series
Dr. Thavolia Glymph, Peabody Family Distinguished Professor of History and Professor of Law at Duke University, will deliver three lectures on “Playing ‘Dixie’ in Egypt: A Transnational Transcript of Race, Nation, Empire and Citizenship,” for the Steven and Janice Brose Distinguished Lecture Series. Taking place on April 18, 19, and 20, the lectures are free and open to the public. This lecture series is sponsored by the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at Penn State through the generosity of an endowment by Steven and Janice Brose and cosponsored by the Penn State University Libraries.
Dr. Glymph’s lectures are a study of white Union and Confederate soldiers who joined the Egyptian army of the Khedive Isma’il after the Civil War. It explores why they left the U.S. to become mercenaries of a foreign army and, more centrally, the part they played in making and transcribing notions of race, citizenship, nation, and empire globally and at home. In Egypt, the American Civil War veterans joined an international force of mercenaries, diplomats, explorers, antiquities seekers, journalists, representatives of geographical societies, arms dealers, and tourists, many of whom, like them, were engaged in the fight against the imagined “horrors of racial equality.” In this work, they had the support of the U.S. government—from the White House to Congress and the U.S. Army—and the applause of their communities. When the last of them returned home, Reconstruction was over, and they could say they had played a part in its overthrow.
The schedule is as follows:
- Thursday, April 18, at 5 p.m., Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library: “’I am not going into the wilds of Africa’: Race and Nation in the Imagination of U.S. Civil War Veterans in Egypt”
- Friday, April 19, at 5 p.m., Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library: “Playing ‘Dixie’ in the Wilds of Africa”
- Saturday, April 20, at 11:30 a.m., Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library: “Egypt in the American Imaginary and the Making of an American Archive of Race and Nation”
Glymph’s research and teaching explores the history of slavery and plantation economies, the U.S. Civil War, emancipation and Reconstruction. She is the author of the multiple award-winning book, “The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation” (University of North Carolina Press, 2020); and “Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household” (Cambridge University Press, 2008), which won the 2009 Philip Taft Book Prize and was a finalist for the Frederick Douglass Prize. She also co-edited two volumes of the prize-winning documentary series, “Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867,” and has written numerous articles and essays, including the award-winning article “Rose’s War and the Gendered Politics of Slave Insurgency in the Civil War,” which received the George and Ann Richards Prize for the best article published in the Journal of the Civil War Era in 2013.
Glymph is president-elect of the American Historical Association, holder of the 2023-24 Rogers Distinguished Fellowship in Nineteenth Century History at the Huntington Library, and past president of the Southern Historical Association. She is also an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer and an elected member of the Society of American Historians, the American Antiquarian Society and the Gettysburg Foundation Board of Directors. She has also been a historical consultant to several prominent national museums and historical centers and has also consulted on films such as “Harriet” and “Mercy Street.”
First Brose Lecture featuring Thavolia Glymph, Professor of History and Law at Duke University
Dr. Thavolia Glymph, Peabody Family Distinguished Professor of History and Professor of Law at Duke University, will deliver three lectures on “Playing ‘Dixie’ in Egypt: A Transnational Transcript of Race, Nation, Empire and Citizenship,” for the Steven and Janice Brose Distinguished Lecture Series. Taking place on April 18, 19, and 20, the lectures are free and open to the public. This lecture series is sponsored by the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at Penn State through the generosity of an endowment by Steven and Janice Brose and cosponsored by the Penn State University Libraries.
The first lecture will be held on Thursday, April 18, at 5 p.m., Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library: “I am not going into the wilds of Africa”: Race and Nation in the Imagination of U.S. Civil War Veterans in Egypt.
“Playing ‘Dixie’ in Egypt: A Transnational Transcript of Race, Nation, Empire and Citizenship” is a study of white Union and Confederate soldiers who joined the Egyptian army of the Khedive Isma’il after the Civil War. It explores why they left the U.S. to become mercenaries of a foreign army and, more centrally, the part they played in making and transcribing notions of race, citizenship, nation, and empire globally and at home. In Egypt, the American Civil War veterans joined an international force of mercenaries, diplomats, explorers, antiquities seekers, journalists, representatives of geographical societies, arms dealers, and tourists, many of whom, like them, were engaged in the fight against the imagined “horrors of racial equality.” In this work, they had the support of the U.S. government— from the White House to Congress and the U.S. Army—and the applause of their communities. When the last of them returned home, Reconstruction was over, and they could say they had played a part in its overthrow.
Writing Group
Black Experience Conference
Manuscript Workshop #5: Gautham Rao, Associate Professor of History, American University
Writing Group
Writing Group
Professional Development Event #4: Digital Pedagogies and Tools
Digital Pedagogies and Tools with Drs. Jennifer Isasi and Lindsey Chandler from Penn State’s Digital Pedagogies & Initiatives
Black Experiences Lecture Series: Chloe Ireton, University College, London
Writing Group
The Catto-LeCount Fellows Program for Equity and Inclusion
The Catto-LeCount Fellows Program exposes students to doctoral study in the discipline of history. During this three day program, Pennsylvania State University faculty and staff demystify the graduate school admissions process and educate participants about the academic profession. All expenses including travel, housing, meals, and course materials are provided by the university.
Penn State’s Richards Center, the Department of History, the Latina/o Studies program, and the Department of African American Studies sponsor the program in a collaborative effort to attract and enroll students from underrepresented populations.
This year’s program will be held in-person at Penn State from March 23-25, 2023. Application requirements and details can be found on our Catto-LeCount Fellowship Program page.
The Catto-LeCount Fellows Program for Equity and Inclusion
The Catto-LeCount Fellows Program exposes students to doctoral study in the discipline of history. During this three day program, Pennsylvania State University faculty and staff demystify the graduate school admissions process and educate participants about the academic profession. All expenses including travel, housing, meals, and course materials are provided by the university.
Penn State’s Richards Center, the Department of History, the Latina/o Studies program, and the Department of African American Studies sponsor the program in a collaborative effort to attract and enroll students from underrepresented populations.
This year’s program will be held in-person at Penn State from March 23-25, 2023. Application requirements and details can be found on our Catto-LeCount Fellowship Program page.
The Catto-LeCount Fellows Program for Equity and Inclusion
The Catto-LeCount Fellows Program exposes students to doctoral study in the discipline of history. During this three day program, Pennsylvania State University faculty and staff demystify the graduate school admissions process and educate participants about the academic profession. All expenses including travel, housing, meals, and course materials are provided by the university.
Penn State’s Richards Center, the Department of History, the Latina/o Studies program, and the Department of African American Studies sponsor the program in a collaborative effort to attract and enroll students from underrepresented populations.
This year’s program will be held in-person at Penn State from March 23-25, 2023. Application requirements and details can be found on our Catto-LeCount Fellowship Program page.
Manuscript Workshop #4 with Kelly Kennington, Associate Professor of History, Auburn University
Writing Group
Manuscript Workshop #3 with Janelle Edwards, Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies, Penn State
Writing Group
Writing Group
Professional Development Event #3: Applying for and Tackling Teaching-Heavy Positions with History Department Teaching Professors
Professional Development Event #3: Applying for and Tackling Teaching-Heavy Positions with History Department Teaching Professors Jamie Andreson, Sasha Coles, Michael Milligan, and Gregory Peek
Writing Group
Manuscript Workshop for Richards Center Postdoctoral Fellow Nicole Viglini
Postdoctoral Fellow Manuscript Workshop for Nicole Viglini with Brandi Brimmer, Associate Professor of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Kimberly Welch, Associate Professor of History and Law, Vanderbilt University
Attendance to this event is by invitation only.
Black Experiences Lecture Series: Nicholas Jones, Yale University
Writing Group
Professional Development Event #2: Writing for Public Audiences with the Editors of “Made by History”, Kathryn Brownell & Brian Rosenwald
Writing for Public Audiences with the Editors of "Made by History", Kathryn Brownell & Brian Rosenwald
Writing Group
Manuscript Workshop #2 with Lucien Holness, Faculty Fellow, Richards Center and Assistant Professor of History, Penn State
Writing Group
Writing Group
Manuscript Workshop #1 with Edward Green, Ph.D. Graduate Student, Penn State
Writing Group
Professional Development Event #1 with Catherine Denial, Knox College
Catherine (Cate) Denial, Ph.D. is the Bright Distinguished Professor of American History and Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. A distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, Cate won the American Historical Associations’ 2018 Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award. She serves on the board of Commonplace: A Journal of Early American Life and is a past member of the Educational Advisory Committee of the Digital Public Library of America. From 2001 to 2011 Denial served as the Lead Historian for Bringing History Home, a professional development program for K-12 educators funded by $3m from the U.S. Department of Education. Cate’s new book, A Pedagogy of Kindness (due out later this year), argues that higher education needs to get aggressively and determinedly kind. A Pedagogy of Kindness is about attending to justice, believing people, and believing in people. It’s a transformational discipline.
As creator and director of the Bright Institute at Knox College, Cate oversees a program which supports 13 faculty from liberal arts schools across the United States in their teaching and research for three years, while providing them with $10,500 in research funds and convening an annual summer seminar. She is the PI on a $150,000 grant awarded to Knox College by the Mellon Foundation in July 2022, bringing together thirty-six participants from across higher education in the United States to explore “Pedagogies, Communities, and Practices of Care in the Academy After COVID-19.”Cate is also a pedagogical consultant who works with individuals, departments, and institutions in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and Australia.
Postdoctoral Fellow Manuscript Workshop for Brooke Thomas
BY INVITATION ONLY
We were honored to workshop postdoctoral scholar Brooke Thomas’ manuscript “To Capture a Vision Fair:” Black Sorority Women and the Shift From Respectability Politics to Public Policy, 1935-1975.” As part of our workshops for our postdoctoral scholars, we bring in two senior scholars to comment. For Brooke’s workshop, Crystal Sanders, Associate Professor of African American Studies at Emory University, and Stephanie Evans, Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Africana Studies at Georgia State University, joined us.
Writing Group
Workshop #6: Kirsten Lee, Pre-doctoral fellow
This workshop featured Kirsten Lee’s dissertation chapter “Archival Values: Feminist Recovery and the Specter of Blackness in Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and María Amparo Ruiz de Burton.” This chapter considers African and Mexican American women’s relation to landholding and gold in the early postbellum period, specifically in writings of Harper and de Burton recovered in the late twentieth century. Kirsten’s entire dissertation, Scenes of Speculation: Abolition and the Movement Literatures of Black North America, 1784-1886, examines how American westward (and failed southward) expansion secured settler citizenship through speculation and other forms converting land theft into capitalist value.
Writing Group
Workshop #5: Moyra Williams Eaton, PSU Grad Student
We were so excited to workshop Moyra Williams Eaton’s dissertation chapter, “The Navy’s Systematizers: Surgeons and the Politics of Care in the War of 1812 Era.” Moyra’s chapter looks at the politics and practicalities of Congress and the navy’s efforts to establish a system of naval hospitals for ill and injured sailors between 1810 and the mid-1820’s. Her chapter is drawn from her larger dissertation project entitled “Constructing a ‘Comfortable Harbour’: The United States Naval Asylum and the Systemization of Veterans’ Care in the Nineteenth Century.”
Writing Group
Professional Development Event #4: Michelle Krowl, Civil War & Reconstruction Specialist, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, on using the Library’s online resources
Dr. Michelle Krowl led us through a very informative discussion on how to navigate the Library of Congress website to access digital materials. These digital materials included manuscripts, prints, newspapers and other published materials.
Writing Group
Workshop #4: Emma Teitelman, Assistant Professor of History, McGill University
The Richards Center community came together to workshop Dr. Emma Teitelman’s manuscript chapter entitled “Enforcing Property and Territory in Phelps Dodge’s America.” Her paper follows efforts to enforce new relations of property in the timberlands of Georgia and mineral lands of Arizona following a period of social and political reorganization during Reconstruction. It shows how jurisdictional boundaries – between national and sub-national institutions, as well as between different national authorities – became a key object of political struggle as capital traversed and transformed different political spaces. Dr. Teitelman’s book project is currently under contract with Harvard University Press.
Writing Group
Writing Group
Professional Development Event #3: Publishing with University Presses: A Conversation with Mark Simpson-Vos, UNC
Mark Simpson-Vos, Wyndham Robertson Editorial Director at The University of North Carolina Press, joined us for a conversation about writing for and publishing with university presses. Mark answered a variety of questions about the publishing process, including how to engage with editors and how to begin the process of transforming a dissertation into a book.
Writing Group
Workshop #3: Amanda Kleintop, Assistant Professor of History, Elon University
The Richards Center community workshopped “Writing Compensation out of the Constitution: The Making of Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment,” a chapter from Dr. Amanda Kleintop’s forthcoming manuscript. Dr. Kleintop’s work examines how the United States was one of the few nations in the nineteenth century that abolished slavery without providing monetary or indirect compensation for the vast majority of enslavers. However, neither US
military victories in the Civil War, moral repugnance for the idea that people could be property, nor the Thirteenth Amendment guaranteed immediate, uncompensated emancipation in the South. Rather, Dr. Kleintop argues that it was the result of a post-war contest where Americans leveraged their understandings of wartime loyalty and slavery’s role in the law and economy to pass the Fourteenth Amendment, whose fourth section prohibited any state or the US from paying “any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave.” This chapter explores the origins and outcomes of section four, arguing that the Congress passed section four and dismissed contentious wartime debates over property rights in people to secure Republican control over Reconstruction and uncompensated emancipation as a legacy of Union victory.
Writing Group
Professional Development Event #2: Journal Publishing with Editors of the Journal of the Civil War Era
This professional development workshop featured Journal of the Civil War Era editors Kate Masur and Greg Downs. Both professors discussed their experiences as editors of a scholarly journal and took questions from our graduate students, including how to begin the process of submitting an article and how to respond to peer review.
Writing Group
“Erasing the Union Cause at Olustee: Lost Cause Monuments, US Soldiers Mass Graves”
This roundtable featured Dr. Barbara Gannon, who received her PhD at Penn State. Dr. Gannon’s current project focuses on Olustee, which saw the largest Civil War battle in Florida and where Union dead continue to lie in unmarked graves.
Writing Group
Workshop #2: Cooper Wingert, Pre-doctoral fellow
The Richards Center community came together to workshop “Union Provost Marshals, Wartime Freedom Seekers, and Military Emancipation in the Civil War,” a section from pre-doctoral fellow Cooper Wingert’s forthcoming dissertation. Cooper’s dissertation explores how wartime freedom seekers and Union army provost marshals navigated civil-military tensions and brokered emancipation in the field, and in the process renegotiated and reinvented federalism in the United States. Provost marshals, the military police of the Civil War Era, were initially tasked with maintaining internal military discipline, but provosts’ careful watch over all civilians who entered and exited army lines put them into daily contact with enslaved people seeking freedom. By looking at the relationship between freedom seekers and Union provosts, his dissertation illuminates how the federal system shaped wartime emancipation, and in turn how the claims of enslaved people and the prerogatives of the Union military reshaped American federalism.
Writing Group
Professional Development Event #1: Everything You Wanted to Know but were Afraid to Ask About the U.S. History Job Market
We had a great conversation about how to approach the job market and prepare job talks with our distinguished faculty members, including department head Amy Greenberg, McCabe Greer Professor Christina Snyder, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, History and African Studies J. Marlena Edwards, and Assistant Professor of History Lucien Holness.
Writing Group
Workshop #1: Heather Wasler, PSU Graduate Student “‘A Precedent in favour of Clemency’: Rebellion, Treason, and Amnesty in the Early American Republic”
A chapter drawn from her dissertation, which examines amnesty as a tool of governance in the United States during the nineteenth century, this manuscript focuses on the use of amnesty as a response to the Whiskey and Fries’s Rebellions in Pennsylvania in the 1790s. In 1794 and again in 1799, citizens of the new United States violently challenged the role and power of the developing federal government by refusing to pay an excise tax on whiskey and a property tax, respectively. State and federal officials sought to reestablish peace in the rebelling areas without sacrificing authority. Despite scholars’ focus on the use of the militia to accomplish these goals, clemency played a pivotal role in restoring order in 1794 and allowed state and federal officials and communities to negotiate the intricacies of constitutional resistance and federal sovereignty. In 1799, John Adams relied on Washington’s precedent of using military force and charging insurgents with treason before also turning to amnesty, despite fierce resistance from other political elites. Exploring the role of amnesty in the Whiskey and Fries’ Rebellions reveals new perspectives on the development of federal sovereignty, the role of the federal judiciary, and the realities of constitutional politics in the Early American Republic.
Writing Group
McCabe Greer Manuscript Workshop with Benjamin Frey
This workshop is part of the Many Wests book series and will generate a book tentatively titled, Rising Above: Language Revitalization in the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, published by the University of Nebraska Press. The workshop is sponsored by the McCabe-Greer Professorship, Department of History, and the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center.
The McCabe Greer Manuscript Workshop with Benjamin Frey will is open by invitation only.
May History Show Us the Way: Roots of Cherokee Language Endangerment and Paths for Reclamation with Benjamin Frey
The Cherokee language represents the heart and soul of Cherokee culture. Today, with fewer than 200 first language speakers remaining among the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ population of 18,000 citizens, the language is severely endangered. In this talk, Dr. Frey discusses the many driving factors of the language’s endangerment and how to address those factors for an effective program of language revitalization.
Dr. Ben Frey is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. His research focuses on language revitalization and the link between social networks, institutional structures, and language behavior over time.
This talk is part of the Many Wests book series and will generate a book tentatively titled, Rising Above: Language Revitalization in the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, published by the University of Nebraska Press. The talk is sponsored by the McCabe-Greer Professorship, Department of History, and the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center.
Many Wests Editors: Thomas G. Andrews, Ari Kelman, Amy Lonetree, Mary E. Mendoza, Christina Snyder; Acquiring Editor: Bridget Barry