Civil War Institute Fellows

The Civil War Institute (CWI) Fellows program provides a range of professional and academic experiences, allowing Gettysburg College students to develop new skills and expand their career options. Meet the 2023-2024 CWI Fellows!

CWI Fellows Group Shot websizedThe Fellows program is a unique opportunity for students interested in history to participate in a shared intellectual experience and take advantage of the unique resources provided by Gettysburg’s distinctive historical location. The program offers students a valuable opportunity to pursue historical research with members of the CWI staff and hone their skills as an historian, interpreter, researcher, and writer. CWI Fellows work at least five hours a week, expanding their knowledge of the long Civil War era through facilitated discussion, experiential learning opportunities on the battlefield and in local museums, and, at times, participation in digital and video projects.

The CWI offers a range of public programming throughout the academic year. CWI Fellows who are so inclined have the opportunity to meet some of the top scholars in the field while helping assist with the planning and social media coverage of events such as the Robert Fortenbaugh Memorial Lecture. The CWI Fellows Program is administered according to Gettysburg College’s nondiscrimination policy, details of which can be found on the Admissions/Financial Aid website.

The 2023-2024 Fellows are busy working on a variety of projects! These include: researching and writing new soldier profiles for the Killed at Gettysburg digital history project, creating short interpretive videos on the Gettysburg battlefield, mapping, contextualizing, and analyzing various Confederate monuments for the new State of the Confederacy digital mapping project, transcribing and annotating soldiers' accounts of the Gettysburg Campaign from period newspapers for CWI's new "Voices from Gettysburg" database, conducting and transcribing oral histories for inclusion in Musselman Library's Special Collections, and leading short interpretive tours out on the battlefield for community members and college visitors.

In addition, the Fellows come together 2-3 times per semester as a group for Zoom discussions with public historians about various aspects of the craft of public history, discussions of scholarly articles and primary sources, and interpretive workshops out on the battlefield.

Check out past Fellows' additional research projects on CWI’s student blog, the Gettysburg Compiler, including comparative analyses of historical newspaper accounts of the Battle of Gettysburg, studies of the intersection between popular consumer culture and historical memory, using memorabilia from Gettysburg's souvenir shops, and more.Visit CWI's YouTube channel for previous students' Zoom interviews with noted Civil War scholars, as well as CWI's Civil War Music Mini-Series.