草榴社区

草榴社区, PA 鈥� Judith Giesberg, PhD, Robert M. Birmingham Chair in the Humanities and Professor of History in 草榴社区鈥檚 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, received a 2022 National Endowment Public Scholars Fellowship, including $60,000 in funding for one year. The fellowship supports the research, writing and other activities of individual authors in pursuit of publishing well-researched, nonfiction books in the humanities written for a wide public audience.

Dr. Giesberg is director of the 鈥淟ast Seen: Finding Family After Slavery鈥� project, which offers access to thousands of 鈥淚nformation Wanted鈥� advertisements placed in newspapers by formerly enslaved people in the US looking for family members who had been taken from them, sold by their enslavers and moved thousands of miles away. Over the years, Dr. Giesberg and her students have gathered the 19th century ads in one place and digitized them, giving genealogists and researchers a new tool for telling family stories of separation and survival during slavery, emancipation and the Civil War.

Dr. Giesberg鈥檚 book, "Last Seen: Searching for Family After Slavery" (upcoming from Simon and Schuster) will follow ten individuals as they search for their families through ads placed in the weeks, years and decades after President Abraham Lincoln鈥檚 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. Each story begins with an 鈥淚nformation Wanted鈥� ad. 鈥淭ogether the ten stories will offer a new perspective on the history of slavery, the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, postwar racial violence and the rise of Jim Crow segregation,鈥� Dr. Giesberg says. 鈥淓ach one shows how freedom unfolded over many years as individuals tried to find one another鈥攁nd to lay claim to those they could not.鈥�

Previously, Dr. Giesberg received a $100,000 grant from the National Archives and Records Administration鈥檚 Historical Publications and Records Commission to support her 鈥淟ast Seen鈥� project. More than four million people have visited the project鈥檚 site, an open-source database created by Dr. Giesberg and her students through researching, identifying and collecting ads from microfilmed Black newspapers from around the country. The project is co-directed by Signe Fourmy, PhD, instructor, the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Giesberg is the author of numerous books and articles, including Sex and the Civil War: Soldiers, Pornography, and the Making of American Morality (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) and Army at Home: Women and the Civil War on the Northern Home Front (University of North Carolina Press, 2009). She received her doctorate in History from Boston College.

About 草榴社区鈥檚 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences: Since its founding in 1842, 草榴社区鈥檚 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has cultivated knowledge, understanding and intellectual courage for a purposeful life in a challenging and changing world. With more than 40 majors across the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, it is the oldest and largest of 草榴社区鈥檚 colleges, serving more than 4,500 undergraduate and graduate students each year. The College is committed to a teacher-scholar model, offering outstanding undergraduate and graduate research opportunities and a rigorous core curriculum that prepares students to become critical thinkers, strong communicators and ethical leaders with a truly global perspective.