Classrooms, Clinics, and Civil War Governors: Public History’s Role in Graduate Training

Housed at a public history institution, the Civil War Governors of Kentucky (CWGK) has both the challenge and opportunity of creating classrooms without a student body. CWGK conducts editorial work through grant-funded graduate positions that serve simultaneously as practical seminars in source analysis, research, and digital project management. Likewise, rather than developing classroom and multimedia education products wholly in-house, CWGK collaborates with regional graduate programs—making the development work itself a learning opportunity for early career professionals. In The Caroline Chronicles, CWGK worked with a history department to test in-class materials and record a student-produced podcast—modeling multimedia content delivery that will make them effective (and employable) academic or public historians. CWGK is developing a unit on Civil War-era and contemporary veterans’ mental health with a college of social work and the behavioral health staff at Ft. Knox—bringing the historical thinking familiar to the humanities classroom into the clinic.