The George and Ann Richards Civil War Era seeks a new Production and Communications Manager for the Journal of the Civil War Era (JCWE) and the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center (RC).

JCWE Production Management (60%): The Production and Communications Manager takes the lead in the production of each quarterly issue and serves as the main point of contact with the editors and The University of North Carolina (UNC) Press.

JCWE issues are composed of three scholarly articles, one review essay, notes on contributors, and book reviews. The journal occasionally publishes special issues. The Production and Communications Manager will coordinate with journal/review/copy editors and the production manager at UNC Press to schedule and guide the journal through major steps in the production process — submission, acceptance/rejection, peer review, editing, design, and publication.

Regular duties involve communicating with journal editors, peer reviewers, and authors during the production process; ensuring timely completion of publication agreements and other author paperwork; scheduling, tracking, and moving articles and book reviews through the various stages of quarterly production in Submittable; tracking essay prize submissions and status; accepting/rejecting minor editorial changes (from journal editors) on page proofs; reviewing cover and frontmatter proofs for accuracy; in collaboration with the JCWE Production Assistant maintain detailed records of the above tasks in the online platform Dropbox.

RC/JCWE Communications (40%):  The Production and Communications Manager will compose monthly RC newsletters, update the RC WordPress website, produce communication materials for alumni, and develop and implement new promotional strategies in collaboration with RC leadership.

Qualifications:

Experience: Applicants do not need formal experience with journal production to be considered as the successful candidate will receive full training in the position, but some familiarity with peer-edited journals (print or online) is a significant benefit. Experience maintaining a WordPress website and writing for a public audience (blogging, journalism, etc.) is preferred.

Collaboration and Organization: The position requires attention to detail and the ability to work collaboratively with the editorial team, authors, RC leadership, and reviewers. It also requires the ability to meet multiple deadlines for multiple production processes simultaneously.

Technologies: Experience with Submittable, WordPress, Dropbox, YouTube Studio, and Zoom webinar hosting preferred.

Education: B.A. in Communications, History, or related field. M.A. preferred.

To Apply:

Please submit in a single PDF document a Cover Letter detailing your qualifications and experience, a Resume/CV, and a list of three references to Barby Singer at bqs6@psu.edu by 1/15/2025.

We’re hiring! Apply by November 1, 2024 to join the Richards Center as a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Civil War Era or in African American History.

This is a one-year appointment with an excellent possibility of renewal for a second year. During their residency, the scholar will primarily perform their research. The scholar will have no teaching or administrative responsibilities. In addition, they will attend workshops, professional development sessions, and other relevant events, and will be expected to take an active part in Penn State’s community of researchers.

A Ph.D. in History or related field is required at time of appointment. Successful applicants must have completed all requirements for the Ph.D. within the previous four academic years.

To be considered for these positions, submit a complete application packet including a cover letter describing your research and goals for the scholarship year, a curriculum vitae, and a list of three references online at Penn State’s Job Posting Board. We will request writing samples and letters of recommendation from candidates who advance in the search process.

Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil War Era

The Richards Civil War Era Center, in conjunction with the Department of History and the College of the Liberal Arts, at The Pennsylvania State University invites applications for a Postdoctoral Scholar in the history of the Civil War Era, with an anticipated start date of July 1, 2025.

All research interests spanning the pre-war period through Reconstruction will receive favorable consideration. Proposals that align with the Richards Center’s interests in slavery, abolition, and emancipation are especially welcome.

Postdoctoral Scholar, African American History

The Richards Civil War Era Center and the Africana Research Center at The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, invite applications for a Postdoctoral Scholar in African American History, with an anticipated start date of July 1, 2025.

All research interests spanning the origins of slavery through the Civil Rights movement will receive favorable consideration. Proposals that align with the Richards Center’s interests in slavery, abolition, and emancipation, as well as comparative or Atlantic history, are especially welcome.

Richards Center director Rachel Shelden recently published an article in the Journal of American Constitutional History. In the words of legal historian Julian Davis Mortenson, it’s “a big deal.”

Shelden argues through an analysis of the Civil War era Congressional Globe that 19th-century Congress reflected public thought and thus uses the Globe to understand what the 14th Amendment meant to the American public. Read here.

Abstract:

Few legislative terms left a bigger mark on U.S. constitutional law than the first session of the Thirty-Ninth Congress, which met from December 1865 through July 1866. Although legislative history has become more controversial in modern legal interpretation amid the rise of public meaning originalism, this session and the men who drafted the Fourteenth Amendment so fundamentally altered the constitutional politics of modern America that their stories remain the subject of deep scholarly interest and fierce debate. In Punish Treason, Reward Loyalty, Mark Graber takes a comprehensive look at this session through the Congressional Globe—which then served as the “official” records of the legislative branch—to explain the broader constitutional and political considerations of the men who framed the Fourteenth Amendment. Using the Globe’s text, Graber argues that Sections 2, 3, and 4 were the heart of that amendment, rather than the better-known Section 1. Yet, a closer look at the context in which the Congressional Globe operated shows that such debates were far from an accurate depiction of congressional business. Instead, the Globe’s pages contained an outsized number of “buncombe” speeches designed for constituents rather than for persuading or negotiating with colleagues; the men who make up Graber’s book used these speeches as a tool of dialogue with the broader public. Ultimately, the Globe may tell us just as much about the public meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment—and many other constitutional and statutory concerns—as it does about legislative intent.

Congratulations to Christina Snyder, McCabe Greer Professor of the American Civil War Era at Penn State and Richards Center affiliate faculty, who has been awarded a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She will use the fellowship to work on her third book project, American Abolitions: The Slow Death and Many Afterlives of Slavery. Dr. Snyder calls this prestigious fellowship “one of the greatest honors of my career.” Read more in this excellent feature from Penn State News.

The Richards Center is thrilled to announce that the first Persun Visiting Scholar will be KT Shively! 2024–2025 will be the inaugural year of the Mark and Ann Persun Visiting Scholars program for tenured faculty in history at the rank of associate professor. More information about the program, which supports scholars of Civil War era military or political history to develop a book-length work-in-progress, can be found on our program details page.

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.

The Richards Center is excited to share that Allison Mitchell and Hannah Hicks will join us as postdoctoral scholars for the 2024–25 academic year. Allison will be the Richards Center/Africana Research Center Postdoctoral Scholar in African American History and Hannah will be the Richards Center Postdoctoral Scholar in the Civil War Era. We can’t wait to have these two fantastic scholars with us at Penn State!

Allison Mashell Mitchell will receive her Ph.D. in History from the University of Virginia, and specializes in twentieth-century African American history, focusing on Black electoral politics, political realignment, southern history, and civil rights studies. Her dissertation, “Battle for the Ballot: A History of Black Electoral Politics and Voter Suppression in Florida, 1940-2000s” uses Florida as a case study to analyze the role of Black Americans in political realignment in the South from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1944 Smith v. Allwright ruling to the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election. Along the way, it traces Black Floridians’ tumultuous relationship with the Democratic Party and capricious interactions with the GOP since World War Two. She challenges the traditional periodization and white American-centered narratives of political realignment scholarship by emphasizing points of contention in state-level and southern politics that display the inherent failure of the U.S. two-party system. Allison received her BA in History and African American Studies at the University of Florida. Her work has been supported by the Jefferson Scholars Foundation, the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida, and the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University.

Hannah Katherine Hicks received her PhD in History from Vanderbilt University and specializes in nineteenth-century U.S. history, focusing on women and law and the intersections of gender, medicine, and law. Her dissertation, “Troubling Justice: Women and the Criminal Courts in the Post-Civil War South” draws on county-level court records to examine criminal courts in postbellum South Carolina and the primarily working-class Black and White women who frequently appeared in them as defendants, complainants, and witnesses. At the Richards Center, Hannah will work on turning this dissertation into a book manuscript. Hannah was most recently an Assistant Teaching Professor of History at UNC Charlotte, which is also her undergraduate alma mater. In Winter 2022, the Bulletin of the History of Medicine published her article entitled “A Conjure Woman in Court: African American Conjurers as Health Practitioners and Performative Poisoners in the Post-Emancipation South.” Hannah’s research has been supported by the American Historical Association, the South Caroliniana Library, the Wilson Library at UNC Chapel Hill, and the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt University.

On April 18, 19, and 20, 2024, 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. The lectures are free and open to the public, and the schedule is as follows:

“’I am not going into the wilds of Africa’: Race and Nation in the Imagination of U.S. Civil War Veterans in Egypt” | Thursday, April 18, 5 p.m. | Foster Auditorium (102 Paterno Library)

“Playing ‘Dixie’ in the Wilds of Africa” | Friday, April 19, 5 p.m. | Foster Auditorium (102 Paterno Library)

“Egypt in the American Imaginary and the Making of an American Archive of Race and Nation” | Saturday, April 20, 11:30 a.m. | Foster Auditorium (102 Paterno Library)

“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. For more information on this lecture series, click here.

The Brose 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 co-sponsored by the Penn State University Libraries.

We are searching for two predoctoral scholars in the history of the Civil War era! The start date is July 1, 2024. This is a one-year fellowship. Fellows have no teaching or administrative responsibilities; they will primarily focus on their dissertation and participate in the Richards Center scholarly community.

We conceive of the Civil War era broadly. We especially welcome projects related to the history of slavery, emancipation, and their legacies and the history of struggles for freedom and democracy in the United States.

The fellowship includes a $40,000 stipend and $3,000 in research funds. For more information on the Richards Center Predoctoral Fellowships, including how to apply, visit https://richardscenter.la.psu.edu/fellowships/postdoctoral-fellows/.

Call for applications for the Catto-LeCount Fellows Program! Application deadline has been extended to Friday, February 2, 2024. During this three-day, in-person program on Penn State’s University Park campus, Penn State faculty and graduate students demystify the graduate school admissions process and educate participants about the academic profession

You can find more information on our Fellowships page: https://richardscenter.la.psu.edu/fellowships/catto-lecount-fellows-program/

Do you have an interest in preserving U.S. history and sharing it with the public? Do you
want to put your knowledge of history and your research skills to good use this summer?
The Richards Civil War Era Center at Penn State invites applications from qualified Penn
State undergraduate students for two paid positions at Harpers Ferry National Historical
Park, and three paid positions at the National Park Service’s Gettysburg National Military
Park during the summer of 2024. The internships provide students with hands-on public
history and archeology work experience. These noncredit internships come with a $3,500
stipend and free housing at the national parks.

Gettysburg National Military Park and Harpers Ferry National Historical Park

Deadline: Monday, January 15, 2024

Harpers Ferry National Historical Park is looking for:

Interpretation intern: Are you interested in presenting engaging history content to the
public? This in-person internship is an opportunity to work in Public History with National
Park Service rangers in the Harpers Ferry’s Interpretation, Education, and
Partnerships team. This intern will develop public presentations and walking tours on a
variety of topics, including but not limited to, the United States Armory and industry at
Harpers Ferry, American slavery, John Brown’s raid, the Civil War, Storer College (one of
the nation’s first HBCUs), and the genesis of the Civil Rights movement including the
Niagara Movement and the National League of Colored Women. They will have additional
opportunities to learn and present third-person Living History programs such as historic
weapons demonstrations. The staff will provide each intern time to research and develop
their programs. 

This intern will work in the park’s Visitor Contact Station, greeting and orienting visitors to
the park. They may also staff exhibits in the Historic Harpers Ferry Lower Town such as
the John Brown Museum. Interns will be expected to hike the park’s trails to familiarize
themselves with the routes and difficulties, and to rove high-trafficked outdoor areas of the
park such as the Lower Town sidewalks to assist visitors. They will also experience digital
interpretation as a part of the Park’s social media team for the summer. 

Housing will be provided in the Historic Harpers Ferry Lower Town, with internet access.
Interns will work a full-time, forty-hour per week schedule. Summer temperatures in
Harpers Ferry often exceed ninety degrees with high humidity. Park hiking trails range from
short, easy walks, to strenuous hikes of six to eight miles. Interns may be asked to lift
objects up to thirty pounds, such as plastic tables or boxes of park brochures. 

Gettysburg National Military Park is looking for interns in:

Interpretive operations: Are you interested in education, public facing history, and
storytelling? As interpretive operations intern you will do research, design historical
presentations for the public, and put on programs for park visitors (particularly
families) that interpret the history of the town, the battle, and their broader historical
significance, highlighting the experiences of civilians and soldiers alike. The intern
will also work in Visitor Services, ensuring that visitors to Gettysburg make the most
of their time at the park. Ideal applicants are those enthusiastic and engaging in
public-facing roles and interested in working with families and children.

Museum services: Are you interested in experience in museum and archival
studies? As museum services intern you will learn the fundamental skills of archival
and museum management. Interns help to install museum exhibits and to inventory
and conserve the park’s vast historical collections. These collections include diaries
and letter collections from soldiers and civilians, as well as material objects, such
as flags, banners, uniforms, weapons, paintings, and prints, among other items.

Cultural resource history: Are you interested in conducting historical research
about Gettysburg, or the African American families residing in the area? As cultural
resource history intern you will work with the physical resources of Gettysburg
National Military Park. Since 1999, Gettysburg was subject to an aggressive
treatment and management program to rehabilitate the battlefield landscape. The
intern will contribute to historical research in support of this program. The research
will involve primary and secondary sources in local archives. Document examples
include cultural landscape reports, historic structure reports, and background
material for compliance documentation. The selected intern will have the
opportunity to participate in applied history projects and discussions with other
park staff— including the management team, regional office staff, as well as staff
from the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office. Some fieldwork on the
battlefield may be required.  

Archeological intern: Are you interested in participating in archeological
fieldwork? As archeological intern you will assist the park archeologist in the
excavation and identification of archeological sites within the park. The intern will
also assist in the care and curation of archeological collections and the
development and presentation of archeological findings through public programs
and written reports. The intern will develop practical skills through planning and
conducting archeological research—including field methods, collections
management, satellite mapping, archeological documentation, and archival
research. The work will provide real-world experiences alongside practicing
professionals. Interested candidates should be aware that fieldwork occurs
outdoors in various environmental conditions and summer temperature extremes.
Successful candidates must be able to bend, kneel, and lift at least twenty pounds.
Office work, including archival research and collections care and curation will be
sedentary in nature. The candidate should have a current driver’s license in good
standing.

Each year, Richards Center interns play a crucial role in the National Park Service’s mission
to preserve U.S. history and help visitors make sense of the nation’s past. If you would like
the opportunity to support this mission and gain valuable skills in historical interpretation,
communication, research, preservation, and public education, we encourage you to apply
by following the directions below.

Application process: Applicants must have at least a 3.0 grade-point average at Penn
State University Park and have not graduated by the time of the internship. Applicants
must: 1) submit a one-page statement of interest detailing why they would like to work at
Gettysburg National Military Park and how they think the experience will further their
education. In this statement, applicants should also specify which internship(s) they are
most interested in. 2) Applicants must also provide a résumé, one letter of
recommendation from a faculty member (email is acceptable), and an unofficial transcript
(it is not necessary to provide a certified official Penn State transcript). Statements of
interest and transcripts must be received by Monday, January 15, 2024. Letters of
recommendation can follow.

Direct all application materials to Abena Boakyewa-Ansah, associate director of the
Richards Center, at ajb8993@psu.edu.

Funding is made possible through the generous support of Larry and Lynne Brown,
Matthew Isham, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.