The Visual Culture of the American Civil War and its Aftermath

FAIN: EH-256769-17

CUNY Research Foundation, Graduate School and University Center (New York, NY 10016-4309)
Donna Thompson Ray (Project Director: February 2017 to February 2021)

A two-week institute for twenty-five college and university faculty to examine the visual record of the American Civil War and its aftermath.

This two-week institute in July 2018 will study the visual culture of the American Civil War and its aftermath. The institute will focus on the era’s array of visual media—including the fine arts, ephemera, photography, cartoons, maps, and monuments— to examine how information and opinion about the war and its impact were recorded and disseminated, and the ways visual media expressed and shaped Americans’ views on both sides of and before and after the conflict. Participants will hear lectures by noted historians, art historians, and archivists and attend hands-on sessions in major museums and archives. A team of three institute faculty that represents the range of work in the field will introduce participants to the rich body of new scholarship that addresses or incorporates Civil War and postwar visual culture, prompt them to do further research, and help them to use visual evidence to enhance their scholarship and teaching about the war and its short- and long-term effects.