Steven E. Sodergren

Steven E. Sodergren, Ph.D. is the Charles A. Dana Professor of History at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont. He received his Ph.D. in American and Military history from the University of Kansas in 2006, joining the faculty at Norwich in 2007. At Norwich, he offers a variety of classes on American history, military history, and British history. Sodergren specializes in topics related to the American Civil War, and each summer he leads Norwich cadets on a staff ride to Civil War battlefields along the East Coast.

Sodergren also sits on the advisory board for the John and Mary Frances Patton Peace and War Center at Norwich and is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Peace and War Studies. In 2017, Sodergren published his first book, The Army of the Potomac in the Overland and Petersburg Campaigns, which was the recipient of the 2018 William E. Colby Military Writers’ Award and the 2017 Colonel Richard W. Ulbrich Memorial Book Award. His current research examines the role that veterans played in shaping the memory of the Civil War in the decades following that conflict, and most recently had a chapter on that subject published in the book The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans by Louisiana State University Press.

Ph.D. American Military History, University of Kansas
M.A. American History, University of Kansas
B.A. History & Philosophy, Cornell College

Professor Sodergren is a military historian specializing in the American Civil War, focusing on combat soldiers and the long-term experiences of veterans. His research examines how soldiers endured war, rebuilt their lives afterward, and how both sides used early forms of counterinsurgency.

Inspired by childhood visits to battlefields and a family military background, he developed a passion for understanding how ordinary soldiers achieved extraordinary feats — a passion that grew from reading memoirs and letters to publishing original scholarship.

He mentors students in military history, urging them to dig deeply, question assumptions, and follow their curiosity wherever the evidence leads.

His collaborative work includes serving as Associate Editor of the Journal of Peace and War Studies, co-authoring research with Visiting Fulbright Scholar Michael Armstrong, contributing to Brian Matthew Jordan’s The War Went On, and partnering with U.S. Army Special Operations Command on historical analysis.

He believes research matters most when it becomes clear, accessible writing that strengthens our understanding of the past.

HI230: Civil War Staff Ride
HI236: Military History II
HI341: U.S. Civil War Era
HI361: The British Empire
HI372: Military History of the United States, 1775-1902
HI373: Military History of the United States, 1902-Present
HI404: Capstone Seminar in History

Sodergren, Steven E. "'Exposing False History': The Voice of the Union Veteran in the Pages of the National Tribune." In The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans edited by Brian Matthew Jordan and Evan C. Rothera, 137-156. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020.

Sodergren, Steven E. The Army of the Potomac in the Overland and Petersburg Campaigns: Union Soldiers and Trench Warfare, 1864-1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017.