Sep 5, 2025 - Dr. Caroline Janney, the John L. Nau III Professor in History of American Civil War at the University of Virginia, will serve as the 2025 Carls-Schwerdfeger History Lecturer on Monday, October 6, 2025. A prolific writer who has contributed to numerous documentaries and public history events, Janney is a recognized authority on the Civil War and its effects on broader American history.
Janney will speak twice during her visit to Union University. At 2:00 p.m., she will lecture on “When the Monuments Went Up: The Long Fight Over Civil War Memory” in the Carl Grant Events Center. Her evening lecture, titled “After Appomattox: Ending the Civil War,” will take place at 7:15 p.m. in the G. M. Savage Memorial Chapel. Both lectures are free and open to the public
A prize-winning historian, Janney has authored, co-authored, or edited 8 books on the American Civil War. Her book Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (2013) was awarded the Charles S. Sydnor Award by the Southern Historical Association. Her book Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox (2021), which will be the focus of her evening lecture, won the 2022 Gilder-Lehrman Lincoln Prize. Professor Janney’s other books include Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies’ Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause (2008), The War That Made America: Essays Inspired by the Scholarship of Gary W. Gallagher (2024, co-edited with Peter S. Carmichael and Aaron Sheehan-Dean), and Buying and Selling Civil War Memory in Gilded Age America (2021, co-edited with James Marten).
After earning her Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia, Professor Janney worked as a historian for the National Park Service before accepting a faculty position at Purdue University. In 2018, Janney returned to the University of Virginia to serve as a professor of history and as the Director of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History.