2014 Summer Teacher Institutes

America in the 1860s

The institute in San Antonio (June 16–19), titled "America in the 1860s," will follow the eighth-grade U.S. history curriculum. Topics to be covered include the causes, events, and legacy of the Civil War; Abraham Lincoln’s administration; suffragists and abolitionists; women in the South; the transcontinental railroad; Andrew Johnson’s administration; Reconstruction; art in the Civil War era; and American writing on the Civil War.

Conrad Wise Chapman, The Fifty-ninth Virginia Infantry—Wise’s Brigade, ca. 1867. Oil on canvas. 2001.7, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas.
Richard White

Richard White (keynote speaker), the Margaret Byrne Professor of American History, is regarded as one of the nation’s leading scholars in three related fields: the American West, Native American history, and environmental history. Professor White came to Stanford in 1998. He is the author of five books, including The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republic in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815, which was named a finalist for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize. Among other honors, he is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. He received an AB in history from the University of California, Santa Cruz and an MA and PhD from the University of Washington. Professor White is also the principal investigator for the Shaping the West project within the Spatial History Project at Stanford. His book Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (Norton, May 2011) was a finalist for the Pulitizer Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Francis Parkman Prize among others.

Richard White.

Michael Les Benedict

Michael Les Benedict is professor emeritus at The Ohio State University. He joined the history department in 1970 and retired in 2005. He received his BA and MA from the University of Illinois and his PhD from Rice University. He has been a visiting professor at MIT, Yale Law School, the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, and Hokkaido and Doshisha Universities in Japan. Benedict is a recognized authority in Anglo American constitutional and legal history, the history of civil rights and liberties, the federal system, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. He has published over forty essays in leading American history and law journals in addition to half a dozen history books and textbooks. He serves as parliamentarian of the American Historical Association and is currently working on the constitutional politics of the Reconstruction era.

Michael Les Benedict.

Daina Ramey Berry

Daina Ramey Berry is an associate professor of history and African and African diaspora studies and the George W. Littlefield Fellow in American history at The University of Texas at Austin. She completed her BA, MA, and PhD in history, African American studies, and U.S. history at UCLA. Dr. Berry is a specialist in the history of gender and slavery in the United States with a particular emphasis on the social and economic history of the nineteenth century. Her first book, Swing the Sickle for the Harvest is Ripe: Gender and Slavery in Antebellum Georgia (University of Illinois Press, 2007), examined slave labor, family, and community in two distinct regions. She is the editor-in-chief of Enslaved Women in America: An Encyclopedia (ABC-Clio, 2012), which was named one of the 2013 Outstanding Reference Sources by the American Library Association. Professor Berry recently published Slavery and Freedom in Savannah (University of Georgia Press, 2014), edited with Leslie Harris (Emory University). In addition to her scholarly writing and editing, Professor Berry has appeared on several syndicated radio and television shows. In 2010, she was on the season finale of Who Do You Think You Are? (NBC) where she reconstructed the genealogy of director, actor, and producer Spike Lee. This past fall (2013) she appeared with Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Harvard University) on episode two of The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross (PBS). Outside of her public scholarship, Professor Berry has received prestigious fellowships for her research from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the American Council of Learned Societies; the American Association of University Women; and the Ford Foundation. Dr. Berry is currently completing The Price for their Pound of Flesh: The Value of Human Property from Preconception to Postmortem, a single-authored study of slave prices in the United States.

Daina Ramey Berry. Photo by Ryan Miller.

Daniel Feller

Daniel Feller is professor of history and editor/director of The Papers of Andrew Jackson at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin and taught previously at Northland College and the University of New Mexico. His books include The Jacksonian Promise: America, 1815–1840, The Public Lands in Jacksonian Politics, and a new edition of Harriet Martineau’s 1838 American tour narrative Retrospect of Western Travel. Three volumes of the Jackson Papers, covering the presidential years 1829 through 1831, have appeared under his stewardship, and the 1832 volume is in preparation. Feller was the lead scholar for the PBS special Andrew Jackson: Good, Evil, and the Presidency, and he has appeared on History Detectives.

Daniel Feller.

George B. Forgie

George B. Forgie is associate professor of history at The University of Texas at Austin. He joined the department in 1974 and quickly gained a reputation as an excellent teacher. By 1979, he earned his first teaching award, the Harry H. Ransom Award for Teaching Excellence in the Liberal Arts. Since then, he has received eight more teaching awards including induction into the first class of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers (1995), the Silver Spurs Centennial Fellowship (2004), the Friar Centennial Teaching Fellowship (2004), and the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award (2010). Forgie served as associate chair of the history department from 2004–2010. Forgie teaches U.S. cultural and political history and the U.S. Constitution. He is currently working on a book-length study of Northern political writing during the Civil War.

George B. Forgie.

Randall Fuller

Randall Fuller is the Chapman Professor of English at the University of Tulsa and the author of Emerson’s Ghosts: Literature, Politics, and the Making of Americanists (2007) and From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed American Literature (2011). For the latter, he received the 2011 Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Book Award. His abiding interest is in nineteenth-century American literature and culture. He also specializes in science, the environment, and literature; Native American literature; and intellectual history. He was a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Research Fellow in 2007–2008 and directed the NEH’s Summer Institute for Teachers at Wilson’s Creek Battlefield in 2010. Fuller earned his PhD from Washington University in St. Louis. He recently received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to support research on his current project, an examination of the influence of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species on American intellectuals in the nineteenth century.

Randall Fuller.

Stacy Fuller

Stacy Fuller began her tenure at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art as the Henry E. Luce Foundation Works on Paper Intern in June 2003. She later held the positions of the Laura Gilpin Canyon de Chelly Intern and instructional services manager. In September 2007, she was promoted to director of education, where she oversees all educational programs and services. She currently serves as the western region representative of the Museum Education Division Development Committee for the National Art Education Association (NAEA). She holds a BA in museum management from Centenary College of Louisiana and an MA in art history from Texas Christian University.

Stacy Fuller.

Kirsten E. Gardner

Kirsten E. Gardner is associate professor of history at The University of Texas at San Antonio. Gardner obtained her MA and PhD from the University of Cincinnati. She is affiliated with American studies and women and gender studies at UTSA and teaches U.S., women’s, and medical history. She recently completed a three-year project with Jack Reynolds, PhD, titled “Transforming Undergraduate Education to Create Significant Learning in History and Biology Survey.” Gardner has published a number of journal articles and is the author of Early Detection: Women, Cancer, and Awareness Campaigns in the Twentieth-Century United States. She is also a past winner of the President’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Core Curriculum Teaching at UTSA.

Kirsten E. Gardner.

Joseph T. Glatthaar

Joseph T. Glatthaar is Stephenson Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is author of numerous books and articles, including: The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns (New York University Press, 1985), Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and Their White Officers (The Free Press, 1989), Partners in Command: Relationships Between Leaders in the Civil War (The Free Press, 1994), Forgotten Allies: The Oneida Indians in the American Revolution (Hill & Wang, 2007) with James Kirby Martin, General Lee’s Army: From Victory to Defeat (The Free Press, 2008), and Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia: A Portrait of the Troops Who Served under Robert E. Lee (University of North Carolina Press, 2011). He has taught at U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, U.S. Army War College, and U.S. Military Academy.  He is past president of the Society for Military History.

Joseph T. Glatthaar.

Patrick J. Kelly

Patrick J. Kelly, associate professor of history at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), received his PhD from New York University. His book, Creating a National Home: Building the Veteran's Welfare State, 1860–1900, examines the origins of the Department of Veterans' Affairs Medical System. Dr. Kelly's research now focuses on the transnational connections between the U.S. Civil War and Mexico. His articles include "The Election of 1896 and the Restructuring of Civil War Memory,"  "The North American Crisis of the 1860s," and the forthcoming "The European Revolutions of 1848 and the Transnational Turn in Civil War History" and "The Cat's Paw: Confederate Diplomacy in the Western Hemisphere."

Patrick J. Kelly.

Jennifer L. Weber

Jennifer L. Weber is associate professor of history at the University of Kansas. She is the author of two books. Her first, for adults, is Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North, about antiwar Democrats in the Civil War North. Her second, Summer’s Bloodiest Days: The Battle of Gettysburg as Told from All Sides, is about the Battle of Gettysburg and its aftermath, and is targeted for nine- to fourteen-year-olds. The National Council for Social Studies in 2011 named Summer’s Bloodiest Days a Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People. Professor Weber also has served as the executive editor of the Key Concepts in American History series—eleven books explaining various aspects of government to middle school students—and edited a supplemented edition of The Red Badge of Courage for Everbind. Her most recent book, which she coedited, is The Struggle for Equality, a collection of essays in honor of her graduate adviser, James M. McPherson. She is currently working on a book about the Union’s conscription effort and its consequences. In addition to her work at KU, she serves on the advisory board of the Abraham Lincoln Institute and the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College.

Jennifer L. Weber.

Robert Wooster

Robert Wooster is Regents Professor of History at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, where he has taught since 1985. In 1998, he was named a Piper Professor for his distinguished teaching. A fellow and past president of the Texas State Historical Association, he is author of ten books, most recently The American Military Frontiers: The United States Army in the West, 1783–1900 (University of New Mexico Press, 2009).

Robert Wooster.