David W. Blight is Class of 1954 Professor of American History at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

. Blight was the Class of 1959 Professor of History at Amherst College

Amherst College

Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...

, where he taught for 13 years.

Life

Blight grew up in Flint

Flint, Michigan

Flint is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and is located along the Flint River, northwest of Detroit. The U.S. Census Bureau reports the 2010 population to be placed at 102,434, making Flint the seventh largest city in Michigan. It is the county seat of Genesee County which lies in the...

, Michigan

Michigan

Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

. The name Blight is of Cornish

Cornish people

The Cornish are a people associated with Cornwall, a county and Duchy in the south-west of the United Kingdom that is seen in some respects as distinct from England, having more in common with the other Celtic parts of the United Kingdom such as Wales, as well as with other Celtic nations in Europe...

 origin. After getting his undergraduate degree, Blight taught in a public high school for seven years. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison

University of Wisconsin–Madison

The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...

 in 1985.

He is the director of the Gilder-Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University. His primary focus is on the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

 and its aftermath.

Along with historians Eric Foner

Eric Foner

Eric Foner is an American historian. On the faculty of the Department of History at Columbia University since 1982, he writes extensively on political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African American biography, Reconstruction, and historiography...

 and Steven Hahn

Steven Hahn

Steven Hahn is the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor in American History at the University of Pennsylvania.-Life:Educated at the University of Rochester, where he worked with Eugene Genovese and Herbert Gutman, Hahn received his Ph.D. from Yale University. His dissertation was overseen by...

, Blight focuses his study on post-Civil War history. He also lectures for One Day University

One Day University

One Day University is an adult education program founded by Steven Schragis and John Galvin in 2006. The program's one-day sessions feature four or five lectures by leading American university professors. Originally based in the New York City area, the program has spread to Boston, Philadelphia,...

.

Awards

• 2002 Bancroft Prize
  Bancroft Prize
  The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas. It was established in 1948 by a bequest from Frederic Bancroft...
  
  
• 2002 James A. Rawley Prize
  James A. Rawley Prize
  The James A. Rawley Prize is an annual book award made by the Organization of American Historians . The award goes to the best book dealing with the history of race relations in the United States. The prize is given in memory of Professor James A. Rawley, Carl Adolph Happold Professor of History...
  
   from the Organization of American Historians
  Organization of American Historians
  The Organization of American Historians , formerly known as the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. OAH's members in the U.S...
  
  
• 2002 Merle Curti Award
  Merle Curti Award
  The Merle Curti Award is awarded annually by the Organization of American Historians for the best book in American social and/or American intellectual history. A committee of 5 members of the Organization of American Historians chooses the winners from published monographs submitted by the author...
  
  
• 2002 Lincoln Prize
  Lincoln Prize
  The Lincoln Prize, endowed by Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman and administered by the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, has been awarded annually since 1991 for the best non-fiction historical work of the year on the American Civil War. It is named for U.S...
  
  
• 2001 Frederick Douglass Prize
  Frederick Douglass Prize
  The Frederick Douglass Book Prize is awarded by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, at Yale University.It is a $25,000 award for a book on the subject of slavery.-External links:*, CSPAN, February 28, 2002...
  
  .

External links

• Yale History Faculty: David W. Blight
• Historian David Blight to Direct the Gilder-Lehrman Center at Yale
• The Gilder-Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition
• Online Videos: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877 - At Open Yale Courses
  Open Yale Courses
  Open Yale Courses is a project of Yale University to share full video and course materials from its undergraduate courses.Open Yale Courses provides free access to a selection of introductory courses....