Faculty News: Dr. Kimberly Kutz Wins Dissertation Award

kutz_photoDr. Kimberly Kutz of UMW’s History and American Studies Department recently won the 2014 Hay-Nicolay Award for the best dissertation about Abraham Lincoln’s life, career, or legacy, presented by the Abraham Lincoln Association and Abraham Lincoln Institute.  She’ll be accepting the award at the ALI Annual Symposium at the National Archives in Washington, DC, on March 22.

Dr. Kutz’s dissertation (“Lincoln’s Ghosts: The Posthumous Career of an American Icon” UNC-Chapel Hill, 2013) examines the perception that Abraham Lincoln’s “spirit” remained in the United States after his death through a range of representations in popular culture: spirit photographs, stage actors and Lincoln presenters, paintings, the Walt Disney Lincoln Audioanimatron, and pilgrimage sites.  She argues that these representations continued to debate whether the Civil War was about emancipation or saving the Union by attempting to solve the question of whether Lincoln would have approved of African American equality – by trying to “bring him to life” to give a definitive answer.