The John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia is pleased to announce the hiring of Professor Caroline E. Janney as the Center’s new director. Janney also will become the university’s second John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War. A graduate of the University of Virginia’s doctoral program, Janney most recently taught at Purdue University. She is the author of two outstanding works in the field of Civil War studies, Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies’ Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause (2008) and Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (2013), both published by the University of North Carolina Press. She also has edited two volumes of essays, published numerous scholarly articles, and is completing a study of the demobilization of the Army of Northern Virginia.
Nau Center Director Gary W. Gallagher and Associate Director Elizabeth R. Varon had this to say about Professor Janney joining the University next fall: “We are delighted to have Caroline E. Janney coming back to the University of Virginia to hold the Nau Chair in History and assume the directorship of the Nau Center. Her outstanding scholarship on the war’s memory, position as an editor of the “Civil War America” and “Military Campaigns of the Civil War” series at the University of North Carolina Press, wide experience in the field of public history, and sterling record as a teacher will yield superb dividends for her students, her colleagues, and the larger constituency of people, both academic and nonacademic, interested in mid-19th-century United States history. The appointment of Professor Janney underscores the University of Virginia’s commitment to the field of Civil War-era studies—and promises to enhance the reach and effectiveness of a range of successful programs.”