Joan Waugh

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Joan Waugh

Joan Waugh

Professor Emeritus

Email: jwaugh@history.ucla.edu

Office: 9351 Bunche Hall

Phone: 310-825-1865

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Biography

Professor Joan Waugh of the UCLA History Department researches and writes about nineteenth-century America, specializing in the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Gilded Age eras. Waugh has published numerous essays and books on Civil War topics, both single authored and edited, including her prize-winning U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth, (University of North Carolina Press, 2009). Her most recent book (co-authored with Gary W. Gallagher), is entitled The American War: A History of the Civil War Era (State College, PA: Flip Learning,2015) Other works include Unsentimental Reformer: The Life of Josephine Shaw Lowell (Harvard University, 1998); Civil War and Reconstruction, 1856 to 1859 (Facts on File, 2003, 2010); The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture (University of North Carolina Press, 2004), and Wars Within A War: Controversy and Conflict Over the American Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2009). The recipient of Huntington Library, NEH and Gilder-Lehrman fellowships, she has been interviewed for many documentaries, including the PBS series, “American Experience” on Ulysses S. Grant and the History Channel’s production of “Lee and Grant.” Waugh has also published a number of op-eds on current controversies regarding Civil War issues for media outlets such as the Los Angeles Times and Salon.com. An active public speaker, Professor Waugh recently delivered the 50th Annual Robert Fortenbaugh Memorial Lecture at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the Joanna Dunlap Cowden Memorial Lecture at California State University at Chico, and the Andrew Bell Appleby Memorial Lecture at San Diego State University. Serving on numerous advisory boards and editorial boards, Dr. Waugh has been honored with four teaching prizes, including UCLA’s most prestigious teaching honor, the Distinguished Teaching Award. Her dedication to teaching reaches far beyond the campus classroom and she has participated in local, state-wide and national teaching workshops for elementary, middle-school and high school teachers. She led groups of Southern California teachers on Civil War battlefield trips and developed and led a summer travel-study program for UCLA students to go on a two-week field trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, Antietam, Maryland, Richmond, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Professor Waugh’s current research agenda includes two book projects: a study of Harvard-educated Union officers and an examination of the nature of surrender during the Civil War. In 2013-2014 Dr. Waugh holds the Stephen and Janet Rogers Distinguished Fellowship in Nineteenth Century American History at the Henry Huntington Library in San Marino, California Click here for her article on surrender in the Fall 2012 The Journal of the Civil War Era: “‘I Only Knew What Was in My Mind’: Ulysses S. Grant and the Meaning of Appomattox”

UCLA At Gettysburg students walking through the famous “wheat field” at Gettysburg National Military Park, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Field of Study

United States

Publications

Books

  • The American War: A History of the Civil War Era (State College, PA: Flip Learning, 2015).
  • Unsentimental Reformer: The Life of Josephine Shaw Lowell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
  • U.S. Grant, American Hero, American Myth, University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
    • History Book Club Main Selection, November, 2009
    • Military Book Club, Alternative Selection, November, 2009
    • Book of the Month Club, Alternative Selection, November, 2009
    • Book of the Month Club 2, Online Selection, November, 2009
    • A Washington Post Critic’s Favorite Book of 2009
    • Jefferson Davis Book Award, The Museum of the Confederacy
    • William Henry Seward Award for Excellence in Civil War Biography, Civil War Forum of Metropolitan New York
    • 2010 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

Edited Books

  • Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). (Co-edited with Gary W. Gallagher, and contributed introduction and one essay titled, “The Nation’s Greatest Hero Should Rest in the Nation’s Greatest City”).
  • The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). (Co-edited with Alice Fahs, and contributed introduction and one essay titled, “U.S. Grant, Historian.”)
    • Winner of the 2004 New York Military Affairs Symposium Civil War Book Award
  • Civil War and Reconstruction, 1856 to 1869. (New York: Facts on File, 2003).
  • Volume 5, of Gary B. Nash, general editor, Encyclopedia of U.S. History; Second edition forthcoming, 2008.
    • Winner of four awards

Refereed Articles and Book Chapters

  • “Francis Channing Barlow’s Civil War,” in Gary W. Gallagher and Caroline E. Janney, eds., Cold Harbor to the Crater: Episodes of the War in Virginia in 1864 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).
  • “It is just what it is and nothing else’: U.S. Grant at Cold Harbor,’ in J. Matthew Gallman and Gary W. Gallagher, eds., The Lens of War (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2015).
  • “I Only Knew What Was in my Mind: Ulysses S. Grant and the Meaning of Appomattox,” The Journal of the Civil War Era (September, 2012).
  • “Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: A History of the Union Cause,” in James Marten and A. Kristen Foster, eds., More Than A Contest Between Armies (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 2008).
  • “New England Cavalier: Charles Russell Lowell in the 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign,” in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
  • “Pageantry of Woe: The Funeral of U.S. Grant,” Civil War History (June, 2005).
  • “The Funeral of U.S. Grant: A Meditation on Gilded Age Religion and Reunion,” Edward J. Blum and W. Scott Poole, eds. Vale of Tears: New Essays on Religion and Reconstruction (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2005). (Revised and expanded version of “Pageantry of Woe,” in Civil War History (June, 2005).
  • “Give This Man Work: The Charity Organization City of the City of New York and the Depression of 1893” Social Science History Journal (Summer 2001).
  • “A Sacrifice We Owed: The Shaw Family and the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts,” in Martin H. Blatt, Thomas J. Brown, Donald Yacovone, eds., Hope and Glory: Essays on the Legacy of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Regiment (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001).

Published Lecture

  • Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: A History of the Union Cause. Twelfth Annual Frank L. Klement Lecture (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2003).

Scholarly Introductions

  • Harold Holzer, Ed., Hearts Touched by Fire: The Best of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (Modern Library, 2011).
  • John J. Pullen, The Twentieth Maine: A Volunteer Regiment in the Civil War Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2008).
  • The Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, by Edward Waldo Emerson (University of South Carolina Press, 2005), pp. xiii-xlii.
  • The Philanthropic Work of Josephine Shaw Lowell, by William Rhindlander Stewart (Cambridge, MA: Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University, Philanthropy Classics Access Project, 2006).

Encyclopedia Entries

  • Author of 40 entries in Civil War and Reconstruction, 1856 to 1869 (New York: Facts on File, 2003), Volume 5, of Gary B. Nash, general editor, Encyclopedia of U.S. History. Second edition forthcoming.
  • “Charity Organization Societies” and “Josephine Shaw Lowell,” entries for Encyclopedia of Social Welfare, Sage Publications, 2005.
  • “Charity Organization Movement,” entry for the Oxford Companion to United States History, Fall 2000.

Awards & Grants

Honors & Awards

  • 2010 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
  • 2009 Jefferson Davis Book Award, Museum of the Confederacy
  • William Henry Seward Award for Excellence in Civil War Biography, Civil War Forum of Metropolitan New York
  • Fletcher Jones Foundation Fellow of the Huntington Library, 2005-2006
  • Travel and Research Grant, UCLA, 1996-2008
  • UCLA History Department Research and Travel Grant, 2002-2003
  • National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the Henry E. Huntington Library, 2001-2002
  • Gilder Lehrman Fellowship, New York Historical Society, 1999-2000
  • Huntington Library Fellowship, San Marino, California, 1997-98
  • Finalist, Nevins Prize, The Society of American Historians, 1993
  • Mary Wollstonecraft Dss. Prize, UCLA Center for the Study of Women, 1992
  • Woodrow Wilson Research Grant in Women’s Studies, 1991

Teaching Prizes & Distinctions

  • “Outstanding Professor in the History Department,” Phi Alpha Theta Annual Student Faculty Dinner, May 28, 2008
  • Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship Program, 2004-2010
  • UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award, 2004
  • UCLA Brian Copenhaver Award for Innovation in Teaching with Technology, 2003
  • Chair’s Outstanding Teacher/Mentor Award, UCLA History Department, 2000-2001