Dr. Matthew Warshauer, Professor of History, Central Connecticut State University, will deliver a talk on The Changing Nature of the American Presidency.

Dr. Warshauer received his Ph.D. (1997) in American Studies at Saint Louis University and joined the faculty at CCSU that same year. Warshauer’s first book, Andrew Jackson and the Politics of Martial Law: Nationalism, Civil Liberties, and Partisanship (2006) received favorable reviews in major history journals and in the New Yorker, which described the book as “lucid and well researched.” Dr. Warshauer’s work on Jackson and martial law was honored with both the CCSU Faculty Research Award and the Board of Trustees Research Award in 2007. This marked the first time that a Connecticut State University System faculty member won both awards. Dr. Warshauer followed with the 2009 publication of Andrew Jackson in Context. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham recognized that it “brilliantly sorts through the historiographical debate.”

While continuing to work on Jacksonian America, Warshauer also expanded his scholarly focus to Connecticut state history by serving from 2003-2011 as editor of the journal, Connecticut History. He also served as co-chair of the Connecticut Civil War Commemoration Commission from 2009 - 2015, organizing events throughout Connecticut to explore and commemorate the war. His and the Commission’s primary focus was to take the latest research on the state’s Civil War history and disseminate it among the public to offer a new and clearer understanding of Connecticut’s position on slavery and the war. That goal resulted in the publication of Connecticut in the American Civil War: Slavery, Sacrifice and Survival (2011), which was described by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Mark E. Neely, Jr. as an “account that puts political parties and questions of racial policy at the heart of Connecticut’s wartime history.”

Warshauer’s most recent book publication is Inside Connecticut and the Civil War: Essay’s on One State’s Struggles (2014), in which he edited essays authored by his many master’s students from the CCSU Department of History.  Most recently, Dr. Warshauer has again shifted his research focus by exploring one of the biggest events in America’s recent past – 9/11 - with a particular focus on teaching the subject to a generation that has no real memory of the event, His book, tentatively titled 9/11 Generation will be out in time for the 20^th anniversary of 9/11.

For his work in the classroom, Warshauer is annually included on the Excellence in Teaching Honor Roll at CCSU. He is also recipient of the 2007 CCSU and Connecticut State University Faculty Research Awards. In 2012 he was presented with the Bruce Fraser Award in Public History by the Association for the Study of Connecticut History (the first time the award was ever given), and in 2011 the New England History Teachers’ Association honored him with the Kidger Award for Innovative Publishing and Teaching.

This program is made possible by donations given to the Friends of the Cheshire Public Library in memory of Arthur Hostage.  

Please register for this event online or call 203-272-2245.