ISSUED: 27 February 2025
MEDIA CONTACT: Hans Fogle
SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV — Dr. Jennifer M. Murray will be the new director of the Shepherd University George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War.
Murray, an assistant professor of history at Shepherd, was appointed to the position in February. She said working at the Civil War Center is a great fit.
“It is a very rare opportunity in academia to be offered a job that so perfectly combines your professional and personal interests,” Murray said. “For me, the opportunity to live and work within such close proximity to our nation’s most cherished Civil War landscapes is priceless.”
Murray is an American military historian with a specialization in the U.S. Civil War who grew up in Western Maryland just outside of Frostburg. She said Shepherd has something very special in the Civil War Center.
“There are only a few “Civil War Centers” in the nation devoted to the study of our country’s greatest conflict,” she said. “And fewer are as uniquely situated in the heartland of the Civil War’s most iconic and famous landscapes.”
Murray has taught in higher education for 16 years but also has deep roots in public history, which began during a summer internship with the National Park Service at Gettysburg National Military Park.
“As someone whose Civil War career was unexpectedly started because of an internship, I am excited to maintain and foster relationships with the public history sites in the region and facilitate opportunities for Shepherd’s students to engage with the rich, layered history that makes this area so distinctly special,” Murray said.
Along with her career in education, Murray has published numerous books and papers based on her research.
Her most recent publication is On A Great Battlefield: The Making, Management, and Memory of Gettysburg National Military Park, 1933-2023, published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2014 and printed as a second edition in 2023.
Murray is currently working on a full-length biography of General George Meade, tentatively titled Meade at War, and is the co-editor of the forthcoming, “They Are Dead, And Yet They Live”: Civil War Memories in a Polarized America, to be published by the University of Nebraska Press.
Murray holds a Ph.D. from Auburn University, a master’s degree from James Madison University, and a bachelor’s degree from Frostburg State University.
The Shepherd University George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War works to establish a Civil War soldier database with initial emphasis on West Virginia soldiers.
The center has a Civil War library and sponsors lectures by leading authorities on antebellum and Civil War history, summer seminars, and battlefield tours.
Learn more at www.shepherd.edu/civilwar.
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