About

Julie L. Holcomb is professor of Museum Studies at Baylor University. She also serves as Graduate Program Director. Holcomb teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in museum, library, and archival collections management and collections ethics. She is a member of the College of Arts and Sciences Diversity and Belonging Committee and has served on the university’s Faculty Senate (2020-2023). In 2023, she received an Arts & Sciences Teaching Innovation Award. Holcomb is the editor of Quaker History, a scholarly publication of the Friends Historical Association.

Holcomb received her BA in History and Creative Writing (with a minor in Literature) from Pacific University, her MLIS with a specialization in archives from the University of Texas at Austin, and her PhD in Transatlantic History from the University of Texas at Arlington.

She is a member of the Academy of Certified Archivists, the Society of Southwest Archivists, the Texas Association of Museums, the Friends Historical Association, and the Pennsylvania Historical Association.

Holcomb is the author of Exploring the American Civil War through 50 Historic Treasures (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), which uses historic objects, documents, artwork, and the natural and built environments to tell story of the Civil War, Moral Commerce: Quakers and the Transatlantic Boycott of the Slave Labor Economy (Cornell University Press, 2016) and Southern Sons, Northern Soldiers: The Civil War Letters of the Remley Brothers, 22nd Iowa Infantry (Northern Illinois University Press, 2004). Her work has appeared in academic journals and edited collections. She has held faculty research fellowships at Haverford College, Swarthmore College, and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Emancipation. Holcomb is writing a biography about George W. Taylor, a Quaker abolitionist from Philadelphia.

Holcomb’s research interests include Quakers, abolition, and the Civil War as well as library, archival, and museum collections.