Allen C. Guelzo

Infobox Person
name = Allen Carl Guelzo

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image_size =
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birth_name =
birth_date = February 2, 1953
birth_place = Yokohama, Japan
education = PhD
alma_mater = University of Pennsylvania
employer = Gettysburg College
occupation = Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era

The Rev'd Dr.Allen Carl Guelzo (born February 2, 1953 in Yokohama, Japan) is the Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, where he serves as Director of the Civil War Era Studies Program and The Gettysburg Semester.

Biography

Guelzo was the son of Lt. Carl Martin Guelzo, Jr., and Leila Kerrigan Guelzo (m. 1950). His forebears on his father's side immigrated from Prussia in the 1870s, and on his mother's side, he claimed ancestors in Ireland and Sweden. Carl Guelzo (1924-2003) was a veteran of World War II, enlisting fresh out of high school and ending the war as a sergeant; but after graduating in 1949 from the University of Pennsylvania, he re-entered the U.S. Army as an officer, and served first in the field artillery and then in transportation. After service in the Korean War and the Vietnam War, Guelzo retired in 1969, earned a PhD in economics from the University of Maryland, and taught economics at Catonsville Community College, Catonsville, Maryland, until disabled by a stroke in 1999. He was the author of "Introduction to Logistics Management" (1986) and "Economics: Resource Allocation in a Market Economy" (1994).

Allen Guelzo grew up in-and-around his father's post assignments, from Fort Eustis, in Virginia, to the Presidio, in Monterey, California. However, he spent his school years with his maternal grandparents in Springfield (Delaware county), Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. At Springfield High School (1967-71) he was a class president, drum major of the band, wrote for the school newspaper, and performed in most of the school's musical organizations (under Dennis Lauffer and Luca Del Negro).

Education

He attended Philadelphia Biblical University (BS, 1975) and Reformed Episcopal Seminary (MDiv, 1978), but went on from there to earn an MA and PhD in history from the University of Pennsylvania (MA, 1979; PhD, 1986). He taught variously for Empire State College, Drexel University, and Reformed Episcopal Seminary, and joined the History department of Eastern University (St. Davids, Pennsylvania) in 1991. He was the Grace F. Kea Professor of American History at Eastern, where he was also Moderator of the Faculty Senate (1996-98). In 1998, he designed, and implemented as Dean, the Templeton Honors College at Eastern. He joined the History department at Gettysburg College in 2004.

Guelzo married Debra Kay Hotchkiss in Metamora, Michigan, in 1981.

Academic Focus

Guelzo's principal specialty is American intellectual history, from 1750 to 1865. His doctoral dissertation, "The Unanswered Question: Jonathan Edwards's 'Freedom of the Will' in Early American Religious Philosophy", was published in 1989 as "Edwards On the Will: A Century of American Philosophical Debate, 1750-1850", by Wesleyan University Press, and won an American Library Association Choice Award. A second book, "For the Union of Evangelical Christendom: The Irony of the Reformed Episcopalians, 1873-1930", won the Albert C. Outler Prize in Ecumenical Church History from the American Society of Church History in 1994. In 1995, he contributed a volume in the St. Martin's Press American History textbook series, "The Crisis of the American Republic: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction". Almost on a dare, he began work in 1996 on an 'intellectual biography' of Lincoln, "Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President" (1999), which won the Lincoln Prize for 2000 and the 2000 Book Prize of the Abraham Lincoln Institute. He followed this with "Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America" (2004), which became the first two-time winner of the Lincoln Prize (for 2005) and the Book Prize of the Lincoln Institute. In addition to these books, he has produced editions of Manning Ferguson Force's "From Fort Henry to Corinth" (1989) and Josiah Gilbert Holland's "Life of Abraham Lincoln" (1998), as well as co-editing a volume of essays on Jonathan Edwards, "Edwards In Our Time: Jonathan Edwards and the Shaping of American Religion" (with Sang Hyun Lee, 1999) and "The New England Theology: From Jonathan Edwards to Edwards Amasa Park, an anthology of primary sources on the New England theology from 1750 to 1850", with Douglas R. Sweeney (2006).His latest book is ""Lincoln and Douglas : The Debates That Defined America" (2008),which became the subject of an interview on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on February 27, 2008.

Affiliations

Guelzo was an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow (1991-92), a Visiting Research Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (1992-93), a Fellow of the Charles Warren Center for the Study of American History at Harvard University (1994-95), and a Visiting Fellow, Department of Politics, Princeton University (2002-03). He was appointed by President George W. Bush to the National Council on the Humanities in 2006. Originally ordained deacon and presbyter in the Reformed Episcopal Church, he is now a priest in the Episcopal Church, canonically resident in the Diocese of Quincy.

Publications

* "Edwards On the Will: A Century of American Philosophical Debate, 1750-1850" (1989)
* "For the Union of Evangelical Christendom: The Irony of the Reformed Episcopalians, 1873-1930" (1994)
* "The Crisis of the American Republic: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction" (1995)
* "Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President" (1999)
* "Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America" (2004)
* "Lincoln and Douglas : The debates that defined America" (2008)