Joan Waugh

A professor in the Department of History at UCLA, her alma mater, Joan Waugh researches and writes about 19th-century America, specializing in the Civil War, Reconstruction and Gilded Age eras. Her many essays and books on Civil War topics include the prize-winning U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth. Other works include Unsentimental Reformer: The Life of Josephine Shaw Lowell; Civil War and Reconstruction, 1856 to 1859; The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture; and Wars Within A War: Controversy and Conflict Over the American Civil War.

Waugh is a recipient of Huntington Library, National Endowment for the Humanities and Gilder-Lehrman fellowships, and has been interviewed for many documentaries, including the PBS series American Experience, on Ulysses S. Grant, and the History Channel's production of Lee and Grant. She has also written op-eds on current controversies regarding Civil War issues for media outlets such as The Los Angeles Times and Salon.

Waugh delivered the 50th Annual Robert Fortenbaugh Memorial Lecture at Gettysburg College and the Joanna Dunlap Cowden Memorial Lecture at California State University, Chico. She has been honored with four teaching prizes, including UCLA's most prestigious teaching honor, the Distinguished Teaching Award, and has led several battlefield trips for Southern California history teachers and for UCLA students.