Editor’s Overview

Welcome to the March 2016 issue of Civil War History, which marks the very first for a new editorial team. For the last five years, it has been my great pleasure to serve as the book and media review editor. I am so grateful for the generosity of dozens of publishers and nearly 250 different reviewers who contributed. I look forward to working with the many readers of Civil War History in the coming years as you publish your own articles or participate in one of our forums. Additionally, I thank Lesley Gordon and Kevin Adams, who have ensured a seamless transition between editorial teams. Their guidance, combined with their tireless work ethic, has been invaluable in preparation for this first issue. Finally, I would like to thank the staff at Kent State University Press, particularly Will Underwood, Chris Brooks, Erin Holman, Darryl Crosby, Mary Young, and Carol Heller, for all that they do in publishing each issue of the journal.

My editorial vision for the journal is to carry on the excellent work of my predecessors, who have published the very best in cutting-edge scholarship that pertains to the Civil War era. At the same time, I plan to pursue more articles that showcase interdisciplinary approaches that both add unique twists and deepen our understanding of this pivotal period in American history. Readers will also notice more unique roundtables and forums that look beyond higher education to explore how public historians, park rangers, teachers, museum personnel, and librarians are interpreting and explaining the Civil War to both the general public and the next generation of scholars and students. Potential authors are encouraged to contact us via email at civilwarhistoryjournal@gmail.com.

For our first issue, I introduce the new editorial team:

Editor Brian Craig Miller received his BA from The Pennsylvania State University and his MA and PhD from the University of Mississippi. He is associate professor and associate chair of history at Emporia State University, where he teaches courses in the Early Republic, Civil War and Reconstruction, African American history, and memory in history. Miller’s books include Empty Sleeves: Amputation in the Civil War South (2015), “A Punishment on the Nation”: An Iowa Soldier Endures the Civil War (2012), John Bell Hood and the Fight for Civil War Memory (2010), and The American Memory: Americans and Their History to 1877 (2008), as well as articles and several book reviews. His research has been supported by numerous fellowships, including a Mellon Fellowship from the Huntington Library and the Ballard Breaux Fellowship from the Filson Historical Society. He has received several honors, including the 2012 Liberal Arts Teacher of the Year award at Emporia State University and has served as a lecturer for the Kansas Humanities Council since 2009. Miller is currently engaged in a study of Walt Disney and Civil War memory as well as a larger examination of the United Confederate Veterans.

Associate Editor Frank Towers received his BA from the University of Wisconsin, his MA from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. He is associate professor of history and graduate program director at the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. His teaching focuses on the nineteenth-century United States, politics, and world history. Towers is the author of The Urban South and the Coming of the Civil War (2004) and coeditor of The Old South’s Modern Worlds: Slavery, Region, and Nation in the Age of Progress (2011) and Confederate Cities: The Urban South during the Civil War Era (2015). His research interests include the U.S. South, cities, the nineteenth century, and political history.

Book and Media Review Editor Ryan Keating received his BA from the College of the Holy Cross, his MPhil from Trinity College, Dublin, and his PhD from Fordham University. He is presently assistant professor of history at California State University, San Bernardino, where he teaches courses in Civil War and Reconstruction, war and American society, U.S. history through film, modern Ireland, and digital history. Keating is the author of two forthcoming books: Many Shades of...