Center for Civil War Research
The Center for Civil War Research is designed to promote a more thorough understanding of the American Civil War, its history and its scholarship, among the various constituencies of the University and the broader community. Our programing includes a biannual Conference on the Civil War, the Wiley-Silver Prize for Best First Book in Civil War History, the annual Burnham Lecture in Civil War History, and research funding for graduate students.
What we do
Conference on the Civil War
Every two years, the center hosts a slate of emerging and established scholars of the Civil War era
Upcoming Events
2025 Conference on the Civil War/Porter Fortune Symposium: New Directions in the Legal History of the Civil War Era
This conference seeks to build on the work of historians who have begun critical re-evaluations of the legal history of the Civil War era. Papers may represent traditional legal histories, as well as military, social, and cultural histories demonstrating Americans’ encounters with the law. The conference features a keynote address by Ariela Gross (UCLA) and a special roundtable with Cynthia Nicoletti (UVA), Gautham Rao (American University), and Anne Twitty (Stanford University).
- October 16, 2025 - October 18, 2025
Latest news
PhD Candidate Matthew Lempke has been awarded the McMinn Fellowship to complete his dissertation on Sherman’s March in three Georgia communities: Griswoldville, Milledgeville, and greater Savannah.
Cecily Zander's The Army Under Fire Wins 2025 Wiley-Silver Prize
The prize committee praised Zander's The Army Under Fire: The Politics of Antimilitarism in the Civil War Era as "well-written and persuasively argued" and a "sobering yet necessary reflection on the constraints of what could be achieved during the Civil War period" and "enhances our understanding of the causes of the Civil War, the ways in which Union armies fought, and why Reconstruction was, paradoxically, a limited revolution." The Wiley-Silver Prize is awarded annually to the best first book in Civil War history.
Robert Colby, Associate Director, Wins Nau Prize for New Book on the Slave Trade and the Civil War
Professor Colby's book, An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South (Oxford University Press 2024) was awarded the 2025 John L. Nau III Book Prize for best book in American Civil War era history.
Lorien Foote Delivers 2025 Burnham Lecture: "Bloodhounds: Dogs, Prisoners, and War in the Department of the South, 1835-1877"
On April 9, 2025, the Center hosted, Lorien Foote (Patricia & Bookman Peters Professor of History at Texas A&M), who delivered the Burnham Lecture on the use of dogs in warfare in the United States south during the nineteenth century. Dr. Foote met over lunch with graduate students from the History Department.
