Welcome
Welcome to the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center. Established in 1998, the Richards Center is an initiative of the Department of History and the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State University. The Center has emerged as a unique resource for interpreting and reflecting on the Civil War era, which extends from the 1840s when Americans began to debate the westward expansion of slavery, to 1877, when government-supported Reconstruction ended. The Center stimulates work in the field by sponsoring graduate and faculty research, public lecture series, undergraduate internships, and workshops for schoolteachers. The Center is also home to Civil War History , the premier journal of the field.

Center Highlights:

Nina Silber's book, Gender and the Sectional Conflict, is due to be released November 2008. This book is based on her 2007 lectures at Penn State and is the fourth volume in the ongoing Steven and Janice Brose Distinguished Lecture and Book Series published by the University of North Carolina Press.

The third volume of the Brose Lecture Series, Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know About the Civil War, by Gary W. Gallagher, was published in April 2008.

Congratulations to Professor Anne Rose who has been awarded the annual prize for best article by the Society for the History of Psychology, a subdivision of the American Psychological Association. Her essay is: "The Discovery of Southern Childhoods: Psychology and the Transformation of Schooling in the Jim Crow South," History of Psychology 10 (2007), 249-78.

Congratulations to Amy Greenberg, named Top Young Historian by History News Network of George Mason University. (full story)

Upcoming Events:

Sept. 18-21: 16th Annual Penn State Battlefield Study Tour, Stonewall Jackson's Way: The Valley Campaign of 1862, led by Dr. Carol Reardon (additional details and registration)
October 3, 4:00 PM: The George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center will be hosting Douglas Egerton from LeMoyne College for the first lecture of the semester. His talk is entitled, "Death and Liberty: African Americans in Revolutionary America."

News:

The Richards Civil War Era Center reached a crucial milestone collecting $1 million to meet this year’s fundraising goal for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) We the People Challenge Grant. (full story)

Podcasts:

You can now download and listen to talks from our Fall 2007 "Breaking the Silence" lecture series on "The International Slave Trade after 1808: Abolition, Enforcement, and the Illicit Importation of Africans into the Americas" at iTunes U. Lectures available include: Karen Younger, "Liberia and the Last Slave Ships"; Paul Finkelman, "Suppressing the African Slave Trade: The Limits of Legislation, 1794–1865"; and Sean Kelley, "Blackbirders and Bozales: African-born Slaves on the Lower Brazos River of Texas in the 19th Century."