John Stauffer (professor) facts for kids

Quick facts for kids John Stauffer
Stauffer in 2014
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Yale University
Occupation	Author, Professor
Scientific career
Fields	English, American Studies, African American Studies
Institutions	Harvard University

John Stauffer is Professor of English, American Studies, and African American Studies at Harvard University. He writes and lectures on the Civil War era, antislavery, social protest movements, and photography.

Education and career

Stauffer received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1999, began teaching at Harvard University that year, and was tenured in 2004. 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. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, Deborah Cunningham, and their two children, Erik and Nicholas.

He is the author and editor of eleven books, including two books that were briefly national bestsellers: GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (2008), which won the Iowa Author Award and a Boston Authors Club Award and has been translated into Mandarin, Arabic, and Korean; and The State of Jones (2009), co-authored with Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins. His first book, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (2002), won the Frederick Douglass Prize and Avery Craven Book Prize and was the Lincoln Prize runner-up.

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, which was a Lincoln Prize finalist and a Best Book of 2013 from Civil War Memory and from Moore to the Point; and Southern Landscape, with photographs by Sally Mann (2014). 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, and numerous scholarly journals and books. He has lectured in Europe and Asia for the State Department's International Information Programs. In 2009, Harvard University named him the Walter Channing Cabot Fellow for "achievements and scholarly eminence in the fields of literature, history, or art."

Stauffer appeared in the PBS documentary The Abolitionists and was an advisor for the film. He was also a consultant for the PBS documentaries The African American Express: Many Rivers to Cross (2013) and God in America (2010). He was also a consultant to the 2012–2014 exhibition WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY and contributed an essay to the exhibition catalogue.

Awards

• 2013: Lincoln Prize finalist for The Battle Hymn of the Republic
• 2013: Best Books of 2013 for The Battle Hymn of the Republic: Civil War Memory and Moore to the Point
• 2010: Bancroft Prize Juror (one of three), Columbia University
• 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
• 2005: Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award
• 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
• 1997–98: Teaching Prize Fellowship Nomination, Yale University