About

The Journal of the Civil War Era is published by UNC Press in association with the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center. It features innovative, well-researched scholarship on the mid-nineteenth-century United States, ranging across all regions, topics and groups, and beyond the nation’s borders. A subscription to the journal comes with membership in the Society of Civil War Historians.

The journal reflects the broadest possible vision of the history of the Civil War Era.  It covers such expansive subjects as slavery and antislavery, labor and capitalism, popular culture and intellectual discourse, politics, military developments, expansionism and empire, borderlands, gender and race, especially African American, Asian American, Latina/o/x, Native American, and women’s history. Moreover, The Journal of the Civil War Era is a venue for scholars engaged in the full range of theoretical perspectives that animate historical practice.

In addition to publishing cutting-edge scholarship, the journal seeks to sharpen debate and engage historians, educators, students, and the general public with:

• Review essays that analyze emergent themes and map new directions in historiography.
• Book reviews by published scholars that offer critical perspectives on key works in the field and the discipline (learn more about reviewing books for the journal).
• Reviews of films, digital archive collections, websites, museum exhibitions, and interventions in other media.
• Our digital site, Muster, which publishes short essays and videos on the ways we teach, interpret, and experience the Civil War Era through scholarship and in popular culture and public history.

The University of North Carolina Press and the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at the Pennsylvania State University launched The Journal of the Civil War Era in March 2011. William Blair, of the Pennsylvania State University, is the founding editor. Judith Giesberg, Villanova University, succeeded Blair and was editor from 2016 through 2019. Matthew Isham served as Managing Editor from the journal’s founding through June 2024.

Kate Masur, Northwestern University, and Gregory P. Downs, University of California, Davis, now serve as editors. The Associate Editors are Megan Bever of Missouri Southern State University, book reviews; Catherine Jones of the University of California, Santa Cruz, review essays; and Robert Bland of the University of Tennessee, Muster and digital media. Sheena Carroll is the Production Manager. Graduate students at the Pennsylvania State University are the editorial assistants. The Journal of the Civil War Era has recruited an editorial board whose members span a wide range of specialties and theoretical engagements. Learn more at our Editors page.

We invite interested scholars of all fields, methods, and orientations to submit manuscripts, proposals, and the names of other scholars who might contribute to the journal. See our June 2020 YouTube video where our editors discuss the journal’s mission and offer advice on how to submit a compelling article to the journal.

Publishers should send books by USPS (preferred) to be reviewed to:

Dr. Megan Bever
Book Review editor, Journal of the Civil War Era
MSSU – Social Sciences
3950 E. Newman Rd.
Joplin, MO 64801