Collaboration

Wesleyan University Press

Wesleyan University Press and CSGS are pleased to announce the launch of Sight Lines, a new book series devoted to vital scholarship on the significance of firearms in society, past and present. 

Sight Lines will serve as a home for today’s most important writing on guns and society, drawing from across the disciplines and beyond the academy. Distinctively, the series will focus on short, energetic monographs between 30,000 and 60,000 words—longer than a journal article, shorter than a traditional academic book, and designed to reach readers with timely, accessible
arguments.

The series is edited by Jennifer Tucker, Founding Director of CSGS and Professor of History at Wesleyan University, and Brian DeLay, Professor and Preston Hotchkis Chair in the History of the United States at the University of California, Berkeley. Darrell A. H. Miller, the Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School and founder of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, will serve as editor-at-large.

History and Archaeology of Industrial Connecticut

CSGS and Wesleyan’s Department of Archaeology teamed up in spring 2026 for an on-campus excavation of Nathan Starr, Jr.’s former High Street home. Starr manufactured rifles, scythes, and swords in Connecticut. The goal of this excavation was to teach students participating in the History and Archaeology of Industrial Connecticut about archaeological methods. Students and community members dug two trenches and tow shovel test pits over 20 cm and found objects including a trowel, decorated pottery, and glass. CT Archaeologist David Naumec served as a course advisor and participated in the dig.

CSGS is in the process of developing a dedicated section of its website to showcase the students and their work throughout this course. It will be launched later summer 2026.

Coltsville National Historical Park

In 2023, undergraduates from Wesleyan University, Brown University, and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) worked in collaboration with the National Park Service’s Coltsville National Historical Park in Hartford, CT on a cross-disciplinary research and design project that created detailed concepts for future exhibits about New England’s hidden gun history.

For three years, Brown students in Steven Lubar’s curatorship courses collaborated with RISD students in Francesca Liuni’s exhibition design courses to develop plans for museum exhibits. Brown students determined content and shape the stories to be told, and RISD students created spatial narratives and drew up plans for the exhibition. In 2023, Wesleyan students, working with Jennifer Tucker, CSGS founding director, undertook research for the Coltsville project and developed lists of objects and images for a future exhibition.

The project was supported by a grant from the New England Humanities Consortium.