James McPherson WF ‘58, the George Henry Davis ’86 Professor of American History Emeritus at Princeton University,  has made it his mission to bridge the gap between the academic and general audience studies of the American Civil War. Dr. McPherson won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. He is the author of numerous other books focusing on the American Civil War and Reconstruction, including The Struggle for Equality, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Award in 1965. Two of his books won Lincoln Prizes: For Cause and Comrades in 1998, and Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief in 2009 Lincoln Prize. In 2002, Dr. McPherson published Fields of Fury, a history of the Civil War for children. Read more about Dr. McPherson’s career and commitment to bringing historical scholarship to the public here.

Frank Bidart WF ’62 is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and a professor of English at Wellesley College. He is the 2018 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner, both in poetry, for his work Half-light: Collected Poems 1965–2016. The Pulitzer committee called the work “a volume of unyielding ambition and remarkable scope that mixes long dramatic poems with short elliptical lyrics, building on classical mythology and reinventing forms of desires that defy societal norms.”

Dr. Bidart is the author of Metaphysical Dog, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, Watching the Spring Festival, Star Dust, Desire, and In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965–90.

Dr. David Kertzer is the Paul Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science and professor of anthropology and Italian studies at Brown University, recipient of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for The Pope and Mussolini, and a 1973 Woodrow Wilson Fellow.

Dr. Elizabeth A. Fenn is the Walter and Lucienne Driskill Professor and chair of the history department at the University of Colorado Boulder, winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for History for her book, Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People, and a 1998 Newcombe Fellow.

Dr. Fenn spoke with the WW Perspectives Podcast in 2015 about Encounters at the Heart of the World.

Doris Kearns Goodwin WF ’64, National Humanities Medal [Frankel Prize], 1996; Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and a leading scholar of the American presidency known for her commentary in television news programs and historical documentaries.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich WS ’78, 300th Anniversary University Professor, Harvard University

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is an historian of early America and the history of women. Her many awards include the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for A Midwife’s Tale and the National Humanities Medal Frankel Prize (1993). She is a MacArthur Fellow and Guggenheim Fellow.

Photo: Courtesy of University of Utah Alumni Association