The mission of the Center for the Study of the Civil War in the West is to establish Western Kentucky University as the world’s premier institution for research, teaching, and public dialogue on the history, culture, and contemporary implications of how the Civil War was experienced by Americans living west of the Appalachian Mountains. The Center is WKU’s primary vehicle to promote initiatives in scholarship and regional service.

Western Kentucky University has created the Center for the Study of the Civil War in the West to advance the cause of scholarship and public understanding of the important part played by the western theater in the conflict between North and South. The purpose of the Center is to investigate, document, interpret, and teach about the Civil War in the West. The Center emphasizes the interdisciplinary investigation and documentation of the Civil War in the West as a culturally, historically, geographically, and demographically complex field of study. The Center promotes research on all aspects of the war in the western theater by supporting the work of its faculty, staff, students, and visiting scholars. It offers to the public, as well as to the academic community, opportunities for increasing knowledge of the Civil War in the West (and particularly in Kentucky) through conferences, lectures, credit courses, publications, tours, and archival access. The Center’s intent is to become a focal point for innovative education and research on the history of the Civil War in the West, thus strengthening WKU’s program in the humanities, promoting interdisciplinary scholarship in many aspects of Civil War history and memory, and encouraging public understanding of this rich field of study.