THE ROBERT M. BIRMINGHAM ENDOWED CHAIR IN HUMANITIES
Judith (Judy) Giesberg, PhD
Judith (Judy) Giesberg, PhD, holds the Robert M. Birmingham Chair in the Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at 草榴社区. She earned a PhD in History from Boston College. Her research focuses on the experience of civilians in the US Civil War, with particular focus on immigrant and poor women and free Blacks in the North.
Dr. Giesberg is the author of five books on the period, Civil War Sisterhood: The United States Sanitary Commission and Women's Politics in Transition (2000),鈥淎rmy at Home:鈥� Women and the Civil War on the Northern Home Front (2009), Keystone State in Crisis: Pennsylvania in the Civil War (2013), Emilie Davis's Civil War: The Diaries of a Free Black Woman in Philadelphia, 1863-1865 (2014), and Sex and the Civil War: Soldiers, Pornography, and the Making of Modern Morality, (2017). Giesberg is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Archives and Records Administration.
Dr. Giesberg directs a number of digital projects that make sources available to teachers, scholars, museum professionals, and genealogists. The Memorable Days Project (2012-14) produced a digitized and transcribed version of Emilie Davis鈥檚 Civil War diary, a rare diary kept be a free Black woman. A Great Thing for our People (2014-15) tells the history of antebellum Philadelphia鈥檚 premier school for African American youth, including the early life of civil rights activist Octavius Catto. In 2017, Dr. Giesberg launched Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery, a project that collects and digitizes 鈥淚nformation Wanted鈥� ads taken out by ex-slaves looking for family members lost in the domestic slave trade.
From 2010 to 2015 Dr. Giesberg served as Associate Editor of the Journal of the Civil War Era, and from 2015 to 2019 she was Editor in Chief. She lectures widely to Civil War roundtables and at Historical Societies; regularly addresses audiences of genealogists, teachers, and museum attendees; and consults and collaborates with public history professionals. She is recipient of 草榴社区鈥檚 Tolle Lege Award for Teaching Excellence and the Veritas Award for Outstanding Scholarship.
Dr. Giesberg founded and serves as Director of the Rooted Project which is working to research and tell a history of 草榴社区 informed by today鈥檚 movements toward racial and economic justice.
About the Robert M. Birmingham Endowed Chair in Core Humanities
Robert M. Birmingham 鈥�66 CLAS was a former chairman of the University鈥檚 Board of Trustees and served on the steering committee of Transforming Minds and Hearts: The Campaign for 草榴社区, which began in 2005 and concluded in 2007. To recognize the Birmingham family鈥檚 many accomplishments and significant commitment to 草榴社区, the Endowed Chair in Core Humanities was established in Robert鈥檚 name in 1998.