Lead Scholar: Joshua Brown

Co-sponsored by the Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC)

Just as technological innovations made the Civil War one of the bloodiest conflicts in American history, innovations in printing and image making brought the war alive to both civilians and combatants alike. The war was seen as never before: soldiers and battlefields, politicians and generals, nurses and families, bombed cities and victory parades all filled newspapers and prints, photographs and stationery, games and broadsides. This program will explore how Americans envisioned the conflict as it was being fought and how it was commemorated once the war ended. Through scholarly discussions and hands-on workshops, we’ll explore photographs, stereographic images, lithographs, drawings, illustrated newspapers, and ephemera of all kinds, such as recruiting broadsides and illustrated letters and envelopes.

Joshua Brown is a social historian and executive director of the American Social History Project located at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is an expert on the history of American visual culture, and his current project focuses on the visualization of the Civil War. He has worked closely with AAS in several capacities, including conducting the CHAViC Summer Seminar in 2012 and delivering the 2009 James Russell Wiggins Lecture in the History of the Book in American Culture.

The Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC) is a program of the American Antiquarian Society that provides opportunities for people to learn about American visual culture and resources, promotes awareness of AAS collections, and stimulates research and intellectual inquiry into American visual materials.