Judges

Kevin M. Levin is an award-winning historian, educator, and blogger and the author of four books on the history and memory of the Civil War Era.

His forthcoming book, A Glorious Fate: The Life and Legacy of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw is the first biography of this famous Union officer to be published in 25 years.

This biography traces Shaw’s transformation from a rebellious son into one of the Civil War’s most celebrated heroes. It also reveals afresh through Shaw’s eyes the sacrifice and service of the African American men who fought and died for their freedom. Though Shaw never fully reconciled his own racial prejudices, Levin shows how the Civil War changed the young colonel as it did the nation.

Kevin is also the author of Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth, which won the The Eugene Feit Award for Excellence in Civil War Scholarship from The New York Military Affairs Symposium and Remembering the Battle of the Crater: War as Murder. He is also the editor of Interpreting the Civil War at Museums and Historic Sites.

An honorary fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Kevin is the author of the popular blog/newsletter Civil War Memory,which he began in 2005. 

Before retiring from teaching in 2019, Kevin taught U.S. History at high schools in Virginia and Massachusetts. He earned his BA in history and philosophy from William Paterson College, an MA in philosophy from the University of Maryland at College Park and MA in history from the University of Richmond.

Born and raised in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Kevin now lives with his wife, two cats, and dog Otis in Boston.

Dr. Ashley Whitehead Luskey is the Assistant Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, where she teaches courses in the American Civil War, material culture, and Public History; works with Gettysburg College students on a variety of original research-based Civil War and public history projects; coordinates the annual CWI summer conference; and gives tours of the battlefield to visitors. She also serves on the editorial board of Gettysburg Magazine.  Ashley received her B.A. in History from the College of William and Mary, and holds both an M.A. in History, with a concentration in Public History, and a Ph.D in nineteenth-century American history from West Virginia University. Her academic interests focus on the long Civil War era, Southern history, cultural history, public history, and the intersection of history & memory. Prior to her arrival at CWI, Dr. Luskey worked for ten years with the National Park Service, including eight years as a park ranger and historian at Richmond National Battlefield Park. Dr. Luskey is an active public speaker, and has delivered numerous interpretive tours, lectures, and scholarly papers at educational institutions and public venues across the country, and has written articles on a variety of Civil War and public history-related topics for various magazines, journals, and blogs. She is the co-author of “From Women’s History to Gender History: Revamping Interpretation at Richmond National Battlefield Park,” which was published in the June 2016 issue of Civil War History. She is currently revising a manuscript tentatively entitled The Last Confederate Christmas: Leading Ladies, Social Politics, and Power in the Confederate Capital for publication.

Gene Thorp is a senior cartographer and international boundary and sovereignty analyst at the U.S. Department of State. Previously, he spent 15 years as an award-winning graphics editor at The Washington Post covering breaking news from the 2000 Bush-Gore election to the rise and fall of the Islamic State. While at the Washington Post he served on the advisory board for the Post's five-year coverage of the U.S. Civil War Sesquicentennial. Gene has reenacted, volunteered at numerous National Park Service battlefield parks, and helped raise awareness and money for battlefield preservation thru mapping and design as a former employee of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites and the Civil War Preservation Trust. His custom cartography business has created maps for numerous high-profile clients that can be found in more than one hundred published books and throughout dozens of museums and parks across the United States. Gene is a co-author of The Tale Untwisted: General George B. McClellan, the Maryland Campaign and the Discovery of Lee’s Lost Orders.