Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott is American History Fellow at Smarthistory. Previously, she was Senior Content Creator in Humanities at Khan Academy. Kim earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in United States cultural history, visual culture, and religion. Her dissertation, “Lincoln’s Ghosts: The Posthumous Career of an American Icon,” was the recipient of the Hay-Nicolay Prize. Kim was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech and Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Mary Washington.
Preface to a collection of essays and videos about what we can and can't learn about the Civil War from art
Westward migration and the establishment of American settlements with and without slavery pushed Native and Hispanic peoples off of their lands, and fueled the flames that would erupt in the Civil War.
Images played a central role in the debates over slavery and Black citizenship that consumed the United States in the years leading up to the Civil War.
The Midway Plaisance featured carnival rides, food stalls, and inhabited “villages” purporting to display architecture and customs from around the world.
The white, Beaux-Arts buildings declared that the center of the world's innovation had moved to the U.S., and was under the exclusive control of white men.