Scott Gac is a Professor of History and American Studies at Trinity College in Connecticut. He teaches courses on American history, race, and cultural memory, often focusing on the nineteenth century. From 2013 to 2023, he directed Trinity’s undergraduate and graduate programs in American Studies, overseeing curriculum, lectures, working groups, and public outreach for one of the nation’s most distinguished liberal arts American Studies programs. He also co-directs Trinity’s Primus Project, a research-driven, community-based initiative that tells a fuller story of Trinity’s past by examining the institution’s historical entanglements with slavery and white supremacy. 

He is the author of Born in Blood: Violence and the Making of America (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and Singing for Freedom (Yale University Press, 2007), and co-editor of the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of American Violence. His public scholarship includes expert commentary for Smithsonian Magazine, C-SPAN, Minnesota Public Radio, and Voice of America.

In spring 2015, Singing for Freedom was staged in a series of performances by the Rose Ensemble in St. Paul, Minnesota. Professor Gac is a graduate of Columbia University, The Juilliard School, and The Graduate Center at CUNY. Find out more about his recent talks and book news at his personal website, scottgac.com.

• "The Republican Statesman: William Henry Seward." Reviews in American History 42, no. 2 (June 2014): 285-290.
  
• "Reflections: Was the Civil War a Mistake? Fifty Years of Edmund Wilson's Patriotic Gore." Reviews in American History 41, no. 2 (June 2013): 361-375.
• "Edmund Wilson, Violence, the Civil War and Me. A Conversation and Reverie."  Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice 17, no. 1 (January 2013): 1-29.
• "God, Garrison, and the Ground: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Origins of Commercial Protest Music." In The Routledge History of Social Protest in Popular Music, edited by Jonathan Friedman, 19-30. New York: Routledge, 2013.
• Singing For Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth Century Culture of Reform .  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
• "Jazz Strategy: Dizzy, Foreign Policy, and Government in 1956." In Americana: Readings in Popular Culture, edited by Leslie Wilson, 29-41.  Los Angeles: Press Americana, 2006.
• "Comrades, the Bugles are Sounding!" Music Research Forum 11, no. 2 (Fall 1996): 20-43.
• Review of Ring Shout, Wheel About: The Racial Politics of Music and Dance in North American Slavery, by Katrina Dyonne Thompson. Civil War Book Review 16.3 (Summer): www.cwbr.com
• Review of I Had Rather Die: Rape in the Civil War, by Kim Murphy, Choice 51.9 (May 2014)
  
• Review of Battle Hymns: The Power and Popularity of Music in the Civil War, by Christian McWhirter, Journal of Southern History 79.3 (August 2013).
• Review of The Fishing Creek Confederacy: A Story f Civil War Draft Resistance, by Richard A. Sauers and Peter Tomasak. Choice 50.10 (June 2013).
• Review of Listening and Longing: Music Lovers in the Age of Barnum, by Daniel Cavicchi. American Historical Review 188.1 (February 2013): 186-187.
• "The Difference in Musical Nationalism." Review of Sounds American: National Identity and the Music Cultures of the Lower Mississippi Valley, 1800-1860, by Ann Ostendorf.Common-Place.org, 13.2 (Winter 2013).
• Review of White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf, by Aaron Bobrow-Strain. Choice 50.3 (Nov. 2012).
• Review of African or American? Black Identity and Activism in New York City, 1784-1861, by Leslie M. Alexander. Historian 73, no. 2 (Summer 2011): 325-326.
• "The Liberties of War." Review of A Freedom Bought With Blood: African American War Literature from the Civil War to World War II, Jennifer C. James. Reviews in American History 36, no. 4 (December 2008).
• "Listening to the Progressives?" Review of Sounds of Reform: Progressivism and Music in Chicago, 1873-1935, Derek Vaillant. Reviews in American History 32, no. 3 (September 2004): 407-412.

• Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale University Library, Yale University, 2005.
• Mellon Special Collections Humanities Fellow, Yale University, 2003, 2004.
• Society of Colonial Dames Fellowship, New York, 2002.
• Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellow, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA, 2001.
• Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow, Library Company of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, 2001.
• Ph.D. Alumni Dissertation Support Fund Award , CUNY, 2000-2002.
• Writing Fellow, CUNY, 1999, 2000.
• The Juilliard School Scholarship, New York, 1994, 1995.