Our Scholar in Residence

Ethan S. Rafuse

Our Scholar in Residence this year is Ethan S. Rafuse, professor at the U.S. Army Command General Staff College.  Author of McClellan’s War:  The Failure of Moderation in the War for the Union, Ethan will present a good overview of the general’s plans and accomplishments during the Seven Days Battles.

Ethan grew up in northern Virginia, received his BA and MA degrees in history at George Mason University, and did his doctoral work at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.  He also authored or edited other books and monographs on Civil War and military history, including; Antietam, South Mountain and Harpers Ferry:  A Battlefield Guide; Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy; The Ongoing Civil War: New Versions and Old Stories (with Herman Hattaway), and A Single Grand Victory: The First Campaign and Battle of Manassas, as well as articles, essays, and reviews in various academic and popular history publications.

Susannah J. Ural

Susannah J. Ural will also enlighten seminar participants with her recent research.  Her current project is Hood's Texans: A History of the Texas Brigade and Southern Society in the American Civil War, which is under contract with LSU Press.  This book follows the men of the Texas Brigade from recruitment through their postwar reunions, and studies them on the battlefield and in camp, focusing on their support for the Confederacy, their motivations for service, and their ties to their families and the home front.  She is compiling the best of their letters, diaries, and poetry into a collection co-edited with Rick Eiserman titled Voices of the Texas Brigade for the University of Tennessee Press's "Voices of the Civil War" series, as well as editing a Texas Brigade family's correspondence for a project titled, This Murderous Storm: A Confederate Family at War.
Dr. Ural's holds a Ph.D. in history from Kansas State University.  She specializes in nineteenth-century America, with an emphasis on the socio-military experiences of Civil War soldiers and their families.  She taught at Sam Houston State University in Texas from 2000 - 2009 and recently joined the history faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi.  She is a senior fellow in USM's Center for the Study of War and Society and is also part of USM's Center for the Study of the Gulf South. Dr. Ural teaches courses on the U.S. Civil War era, nineteenth-century America, U.S. military history, and Irish-American and U.S. immigration history.

Joseph Stahl

Joseph Stahl will discuss the progress of the Peninsula Campaign through the ID discs that were recovered from various camps and battle sites.  He retired from the Institute for Defense Analyses in 2008 where he authored or co-authored more that 50 reports on defense issues. He grew up in St. Louis, where he earned an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis, and he is currently a Battlefield Guide at Antietam. He is also a member of the Company of Military Historians, Save Historic Antietam Foundation, Hagerstown Civil War Roundtable and other civil war groups.

Joseph is co-author of the first book on ID discs Identification Discs of Union Soldiers in the Civil War. He has spoken to various Civil War groups including the Northern Virginia Relic Hunters, South Mountain Coin and Relic Club, York Civil War Round Table, Chambersburg Civil War Tours, Save Historic Antietam Foundation and the NPS Antietam Visitors Center. He has also authored more that two dozen articles about items in his collections for the Gettysburg Magazine, the Washington Times, Manuscripts, America’s Civil War, Military Collector & Historian, the Civil War Historian and the Skirmish Line of the North-South Skirmish Association. Displays of items from of his collection have won awards at Civil War shows.

Mark Snell, director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War, will offer an “Overview of the Peninsula Campaign, from both the Union and the Confederate Perspective, March through July 1862.” 

Other fascinating historians to come soon!