Gary Gallagher joins UVa Miller Center, will lead lecture series on presidency

Leading Civil War historian and University of Virginia professor Gary W. Gallagher has joined U.Va.’s Miller Center as a senior faculty associate. Gallagher has written and edited more than 30 books on the Civil War.

Gallagher will supervise the Center’s Historical Presidency lecture series, a new initiative that will offer perspective on how presidential leadership has evolved over time. The theme for the 2013-14 academic year will be “The American Presidency and the Crises of the Nineteenth Century.” Speakers will focus on moments of national crisis that provide good vantage points from which to perceive the strength and weaknesses of leaders and political institutions.

“Gary Gallagher is one of the nation’s pre-eminent scholars of the Civil War and the nineteenth century,” said William I. Hitchcock, the Miller Center’s director of research and scholarship. “In fact he is a national treasure, and known to thousands of U.Va. students for his thrilling lectures on the Civil War era. We are extremely fortunate to have him join our ranks, and to take up the leadership of this exciting presidential lecture series.”

“I am delighted to join the splendid group of scholars at the Miller Center,” Gallagher said. “I look forward to working with them in ways that will strengthen the Center’s exemplary reputation as a leader in the field of political history broadly defined.”

At U.Va., Gallagher is the John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War and was named to the Cavaliers' Distinguished Teaching Professorship, the University’s highest teaching award, in 2010-12.

His most recent book is “Becoming Confederates: Paths to a New National Loyalty.” Other books include “The Union War,” “The Confederate War,” “Lee and His Generals in War and Memory,” and “Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War.” He has coauthored and edited several works on individual battles and campaigns and published more than 100 articles in scholarly journals and popular historical magazines.

He has received many awards for his research and writing, including the Tom Watson Brown Book Prize for the best book in Civil War studies, the Lincoln Prize (shared with three others), the Laney Prize for the best book on the Civil War, and the Fletcher Pratt Award for the best nonfiction book on the Civil War.

Gallagher was a founder and the first president of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites and has served on the board of directors of the Civil War Trust.

More information on the Historical Presidency lecture series can be found at millercenter.org/academic/gage.