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Silvana R. Siddali, Ph.D.

Professor
Department of History

Education

Ph.D., Harvard University, 1999;
A.M., Harvard University, 1993;
Ed.M., Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1989;
B.F.A., Massachusetts College of Art, 1984

Research Interests

19th century American political and constitutional history

Publications and Media Placements

Books
• Frontier Democracy: Constitutional Conventions in the Old Northwest (Cambridge University Press, October 2015)

• From Property to Person: Slavery and the Confiscation Acts, 1861-1862 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005).

Edited Volumes

• Missouri's War: The Civil War in Documents (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009).

Journal Articles

"Regulating the Jackals of the Monetary World: Banking and Constitutional Reform in the Antebellum Northwest," Western Historical Quarterly 44 (Winter 2013): 389-409. 

"Principle, Interest, and Patriotism All Combine": The Iowa Capital City Controversy," Annals of Iowa, 64 (2):111-138.

"Refined, Highfalutin' Principles": The Northern Public and the Constitution in 1861-1862," American Nineteenth Century History, 2 (2001)60-81. 

"The Sport of Folly and the Prize of Treason: Confederate Property Seizures and The Northern Home Front during the Secession Crisis," Civil War History, 47 (2001): 310-333.

Joel Perlmann, Silvana R. Siddali and Keith Whitescarver, "Literacy, Schooling and Teaching Among New England Women, 1780-1829," History of Education Quarterly, 37 (1997), 117-139.

Essays in Edited Volumes

"Democracy and Emancipation," in Harold K. Busch, ed., "What Historians Think of Spielberg's Lincoln," Cineaste 38 (2013): 13-19.

"Lincoln the Politician," in Abraham Lincoln: Self-Made in America, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, Illinois, 2008.

"Social Trends and Everyday Life in the Era of the Civil War," chapter in The Era of the Civil War, 1850-1877, Thomas J. Brown, editor (Columbia: Manly, Inc., 1997), 265-307.

Honors and Awards

  • Missouri Humanities Council, Distinguished Achievement in Literature Award, 2011
  • President's Research Fellowship, Saint Louis University, 2011
  • State Historical Society of Iowa Research and Publication Grant, 2005
  • Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Travel Grant, 2004
  • National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, 2003
  • St. Louis Mercantile Library Fellowship, 2003
  • J. Everett Helm Fellowship, Lilly Library, Indiana University, 2003
  • Gilder-Lehrman Institute Fellowship, 2003
  • Newberry Library Center for Great Lakes Culture Fellowship, 2002