John Stauffer is Professor of English, American Studies, and African American Studies at Harvard University.[1] He writes and lectures on the Civil War era, antislavery, social protest movements, and photography.
Stauffer received his Ph.D.inAmerican Studies from Yale University in 1999, began teaching at Harvard University that year, and was tenured in 2004.[2] He was the Chair of History and Literature and Professor of English and African and African American Studies in 2013, Chair of the History of American Civilization and Professor of English and African and African American Studies from 2006 to 2012, and Professor of English, History of American Civilization, and African and African American Studies from 2004 to 2006.[3]
He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, Deborah Cunningham, and their two children, Erik and Nicholas.[4]
His most recent books are The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Biography of the Song that Marches On (2013), co-authored with Benjamin Soskis,[11] which was a Lincoln Prize finalist[12] and a Best Book of 2013 from Civil War Memory and Moore to the Point;[13] and Sally Mann, Southern Landscape (2014).[14]
Stauffer's essays and reviews have appeared in Time, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Huffington Post, The New Republic, Raritan,[15] and numerous scholarly journals and books. He has lectured in Europe and Asia for the State Department's International Information Programs.[16]
In 2009, Harvard University named him the Walter Channing Cabot Fellow for "achievements and scholarly eminence in the fields of literature, history, or art."[17]
Stauffer appeared in the PBS documentary The Abolitionists and was an advisor for the film.[18] He was also a consultant for the PBS documentaries The African American Express: Many Rivers to Cross (2013) and God in America (2010).[19]
He was also a consultant to the 2012–2014 exhibition WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY and contributed an essay to the exhibition catalogue.[20]
2009–10: Walter Channing Cabot Fellow, Harvard University, for “achievements and scholarly eminence in the fields of literature, history or art.”
2009: Purdue University, College of Liberal Arts, Distinguished Alumni Award
2009: Iowa Author Award (for GIANTS)
2009: Boston Authors Club Award: “Highly Recommended” (3rd Place) (for GIANTS)
2008: Association of American University Presses (AAUP) “must have” selection for Public and Secondary School Libraries (for The Problem of Evil, with Steven Mintz)
2007: Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize Nomination[21]
2005: Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award[22]
2005: Nineteenth-Century Studies Association, runner-up for the best essay (Meteor of War: The John Brown Story, “Introduction,” with Zoe Trodd).
2003: Avery O. Craven Award for the most original book on the coming of the Civil War, the Civil War, or the era of Reconstruction, from the Organization of American Historians (for The Black Hearts of Men)
2003: Lincoln Prize, Second Place Winner, for the best book on Lincoln or theCivil War era, from the Gettysburg Institute (for The Black Hearts of Men)
2003: Magill’s Literary Annual award, for The Black Hearts of Men
2002: Frederick Douglass Book Prize, Co-Winner, for the best book on slavery, resistance, or abolition, from the Gilder Lehrman Institute (for The Black Hearts of Men)
2002: Jan Thaddeus Teaching Prize, History and Literature, Harvard University
2000: Dixon Ryan Fox Prize finalist, for the best book-length manuscript on New York State, New York State Historical Association, 2000
1999: Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize recipient for the best dissertation in American Studies, American Studies Association[23]
1997–98: Teaching Prize Fellowship Nomination, Yale University
Frederick Douglass, The Heroic Slave: A Cultural and Critical Edition, co-edited with Robert S. Levine and John R. McKivigan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015).
Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century's Most Photographed American, co-authored with Zoe Trodd and Celeste-Marie Bernier (New York and London: Liveright Publishing Corporation, revised edition, 2015).[24]
Southern Landscape, photographs by Sally Mann, "Introduction and Reflections" by John Stauffer (Brewster, Mass.: 21st Editions, 2013)
The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Biography of the Song That Marches On, co-authored with Benjamin Soskis (New York: Oxford University Press, June 2013).
Lincoln Prize Finalist, 2013, for best book on the Civil War era.
Best Books of 2013, Civil War Memory: "Best Union Study".
The State of Jones, co-authored with Sally Jenkins (New York: Doubleday, 2009).[26][27]
New York Times bestseller (nonfiction).
More than 30,000 hardcover copies sold.
Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by Doubleday.
GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (New York: TWELVE/Hachette Book Group, 2008).
Iowa Author Award 2009.
Boston Authors Club 2009 award: "highly recommended".
Progressive Book Club featured selection.
History Book Club featured selection.
Boston Globe bestseller (nonfiction).
Amazon.com bestseller.
Reviewed in more than 100 newspapers and magazines.
More than 30,000 hardcover copies sold.
Korean, Mandarin, and Arabic translations.
Prophets Of Protest: Reconsidering the History of American Abolitionism, edited by Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John Stauffer (New York: The New Press, 2006).
The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, edited by John Stauffer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002).[28]
Co-Winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize.
Winner of the Avery Craven Book Award.
Lincoln Prize 2nd Place Winner.
Magill’s Literary Annual award for "best serious literature" in 2002.
"A Pragmatic Precedent" (with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.), The New York Times, January 19, 2009.
"What Obama Can Learn from Lincoln’s Inaugural", The Huffington Post, January 11, 2009.
Letter to the Editor, on Frederick Douglass and Ralph Waldo Emerson, New York Times Book Review, September 21, 2008, p. 6.
"Across the Great Divide: The Friendship Between Lincoln and Frederick Douglass required from both a change of heart", Time Magazine, July 4, 2005, pp. 58–65.
"Fear and Doubt in Cleveland", The New York Times, Disunion: 106 Articles from The New York Times Opinionator, ed. Ted Widmer (New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2013), pp. 22–26.
"The 'Terrible Reality' of the First Living-Room Wars", WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath, by Anne Wilkes Tucker and Will Michels (Houston and New Haven: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Yale University Press, 2012), pp. 80–93.
Venues include Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (November 11, 2012 – February 3, 2013); the Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles (March 23–June 2, 2013); The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (June 29–September 29, 2013); and the Brooklyn Museum, New York (November 8, 2013 – February 2, 2014).[29]
