Stephanie McCurry
Stephanie McCurry is a distinguished historian and author known for her impactful research on the American South, women's roles, and the American Civil War. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, she pursued her undergraduate studies at the University of Western Ontario in Canada before completing her graduate education in the United States, earning her PhD from the State University of New York at Binghamton. McCurry has taught at several prominent universities, including the University of California, San Diego, Northwestern University, and the University of Pennsylvania, where she currently serves as a professor.
Her notable works include "Masters of Small Worlds," which explores the dynamics of small farmers in antebellum South Carolina, and "Confederate Reckoning," which examines the political landscape during the Civil War, highlighting the agency of Southern women. McCurry's scholarship has been recognized with multiple awards, including a Pulitzer Prize finalist nod and the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. In addition to her teaching and writing, she has contributed to history education initiatives and served on various academic boards. Her most recent book, "Women’s War," investigates the active roles of women during and after the Civil War. McCurry's research has significantly advanced the understanding of 19th-century American history, particularly the intersection of gender and conflict.
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Stephanie McCurry
Historian
- Born: Belfast, Northern Ireland
Contribution: Stephanie McCurry is a renowned historian and author, best known for her research on the American South, women and gender, and the American Civil War.
Background
Stephanie McCurry was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She attended college in Ontario, Canada, at the University of Western Ontario for her undergraduate degree. McCurry has stated that studying American slavery in Canada gave her a more global perspective on that particular era.
For her graduate studies, McCurry moved to the United States, where she received her master’s degree from the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. She then received her PhD from the State University of New York at Binghamton.
McCurry went on to teach for nine years at the University of California, San Diego, as an associate professor of history. She then taught at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, from 1998 to 2003, before moving to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia to serve as an associate and then full professor of history.
Career
Upon moving to the United States for her education, McCurry devoted her research to American history, particularly aspects relating to the south. Her first book, Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country, was published in 1995. In the book, McCurry examines the role of the yeomanry (a class of small farmers) in South Carolina plantation society. She explores the domestic and public relations of the yeomanry and how they removed the privileges of masterhood from the larger slave-owning plantation owners. The central role played by women in this society is also analyzed.
Masters of Small Worlds received several awards, including the John Hope Franklin Prize of the American Studies Association and the Charles Sydnor Award of the Southern Historical Association. McCurry’s essays have appeared in numerous academic journals such as Journal of American History, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, and The Women’s Review of Books, as well as popular publications such as The Nation and the Times Literary Supplement. Her work has also been featured in anthologies, including Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War (1992).
McCurry’s second book was published in 2010. Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South looks at the political policies regarding women and slaves in the South during the Civil War and how the pro-slavery ideologies that the Confederate states clung to led to their demise. McCurry argues in the book that Southern soldiers’ wives who protected their homes while their husbands were away forced their demands and rights to be acknowledged in the public realm.
Confederate Reckoning received numerous awards and high accolades. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for history in 2011 and won the 2011 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, presented by Yale University. McCurry also received the 2011 Avery O. Craven Award, presented by the Organization of American Historians, which is awarded to the author of the most original book on Civil War matters.
Throughout her career, McCurry has held several positions outside of teaching and writing. From 1996 to 1998 she served as director of the California History Project, a kindergarten through twelfth grade initiative dedicated to improving history education. She was also the director of the Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities at Northwestern University from 2002 to 2003 and, along with fellow historian David Blight, cochaired the program committee of the Organization of American Historians in 2003. McCurry became an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer in 2005.
After joining the history faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 2003, McCurry taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses as a Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of History. Her areas of expertise include American, Southern, and women’s history, along with the comparative history of slavery and emancipation. During the 2006 to 2007 school year, she was a visiting professor of history at Princeton University, in Princeton, New Jersey. She has also held several fellowships, including those from the Smithsonian Institution and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2014, the University of Pennsylvania honored her with its Richard Dunn Award for Distinguished Teaching. In 2015, McCurry was recruited to Columbia University in New York, where she replaced historian Eric Foner as the R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History in Honor of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In addition to her formal university courses, McCurry has taught massively open online courses related to her areas of research. She has also served as a trustee for the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History and sat on the editorial board of the Journal of the Civil War Era.
McCurry published her third book, Women's War: Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War, in 2019. In it, she examines the active roles of Southern women during and immediately after the Civil War, with a focus on the exploits of female Confederate spies, the murky legal status of enslaved women who escaped the South, and the impacts of Emancipation and Reconstruction on former Confederate society wives. Women's War was largely well received by critics.
In 2023, McCurry was chosen to receive a prestigious fellowship from the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
Impact
McCurry’s studies have made her a leading authority on nineteenth-century American history, specifically slavery and the Civil War. Her contribution to the study of American women’s history has presented new ways of understanding events during the Civil War period. With her landmark book Confederate Reckoning, McCurry created a unique window of Civil War historiography for students and other historians to build upon.
Personal Life
McCurry was married to Steven Hahn, another history professor. They had two children, a son and a daughter.
Bibliography
Carmichael, Peter S. Rev. of Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South, by Stephanie McCurry. Civil War History 57.3 (2011): 274–277. Print.
Foner, Eric. “Restless Confederates.” Rev. of Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South, by Stephanie McCurry. Nation 291.5/6 (2010): 39–42. Print.
"McCurry, Stephanie." Columbia University, 28 Aug. 2024, history.columbia.edu/person/mccurry-stephanie/. Accessed 23 Sept. 2024.
McCurry, Stephanie. “The Confederacy: America’s Worst Idea.” HistoryNet, 4 Oct. 2010, www.historynet.com/the-confederacy-americas-worst-idea/. Accessed 23 Sept. 2024.
“Two Chairs for New Faculty in History: Dr. Hahn, Dr. McCurry.” University of Pennsylvania, 7 Oct. 2003, almanac.upenn.edu/archive/v50/n07/history‗chairs.html. Accessed 23 Sept. 2024.
Walsh, David Austin. “UPenn’s Stephanie McCurry to Lead First MOOC on History of Slavery.” History News Network, 10 June 2013, www.hnn.us/article/upenns-stephanie-mccurry-to-lead-first-mooc-on-his. Accessed 23 Sept. 2024.