Visual Culture of the American Civil War and Its Aftermath

The American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at the City University of New York Graduate Center will host a National Endowment for the Humanities institute in Summer 2023 for 25 college and university teachers to study the visual culture of the American Civil War and its aftermath. The institute will focus on the era's array of visual media - including 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 views on both sides of and before and after the conflict. 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, conduct individual conferences to do further research, and help them to use visual evidence to enhance their scholarship and teaching.