The Center for the Study of Guns & Society engages students in coursework and research across multiple academic disciplines on topics related to guns and society.
Teaching
CSGS’s academic home is Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, a 193-year-old liberal arts university characterized by boldness, rigor, and practical idealism. Our center takes pride in working with undergraduate students, providing diverse opportunities to study the history of firearms through multiple disciplines including art, film, religion, quantitative analysis, social justice, and technology.
Over the past two years, thanks to The Mellon Foundation’s Humanities for All Times initiative, CSGS introduced four new courses at Wesleyan:
- Guns and Society
- God & Guns: The History of Faith and Firearms in America
- Reenacting Justice: Guns in America
- Visualizing Firearms History: An Applied Quantitative and Archival Approach for a Project-Based Explanation (starting Fall 2024)
To date, every course has been filled, plus waitlists. Classes present undergraduate students from a variety of different majors from history to STEM, government, literature and theater to engage in active study of the past. In course assignments and individual and group projects, they learn to recognize complexity and back up their conclusions with solid, historical evidence. They collaborate with peers at other colleges, including Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD); visit sites such as Coltsville National Historical Park; present original research at CSGS’s Annual Undergraduate Research Conference; and create art, including short films.
CSGS has also worked with faculty to deepen firearms scholarship in existing courses. For example, the War and Society course explores studies of contemporary military, security and global small arms.
Conferences
Each spring, CSGS convenes its annual Undergraduate Research Conference. See links below for details about the 2024 and 2023 conferences.
Research
CSGS provides a range of meaningful opportunities for undergraduate students to participate in research. Read about some of these projects:
- Studying Guns in Political AdvertisementsLatonya Smith ’24 and Emma Tuhabonye ’24 are studying guns in political advertisements through the Wesleyan Media Project. Their research aims to gain insight into how candidate traits—such as gender, partisanship, and race—may affect whether and how candidates discuss and feature guns in political advertisements. They used deep learning models… Read more: Studying Guns in Political Advertisements
- Research in Collaboration with Wesleyan’s Quantitative Analysis Center (QAC)Through analysis of firearm data (from patents, ballistics, manufacturing, gun deaths, and marketing), this project aims to track advancements in firearms from innovation to use in broader society. Textual analysis of firearm patents will give insight into how various mechanisms (eg. safety features) have been adopted in guns available in… Read more: Research in Collaboration with Wesleyan’s Quantitative Analysis Center (QAC)
Public Humanities
- Carceral ConnecticutThe Carceral Connecticut Project (CCP) is an interdisciplinary, humanistic exploration of how Connecticut remembers and denies its past, funded by a generous three-year, $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation. Through research, curricula, and collaborations with historical and cultural organizations in the Connecticut River Valley, the project seeks to fill… Read more: Carceral Connecticut
- Coltsville Historic ParkUndergraduates from Wesleyan, Brown, and RISD are working in collaboration with the National Park Service’s Coltsville Historic Park in Hartford, CT on a cross-disciplinary research and design project that will result in exhibits about New England’s hidden gun history. Coltsville is an important historical site in rough condition, with a… Read more: Coltsville Historic Park
