Questions and Bibliography

Apply: Connect the Collection to "Mythologizing Memory"

  1. Think about the way popular culture influenced the national memory of the Civil War. Looking around today, can we find any patterns in music, magazines, news, books, etc., that reflect current issues in politics or society? How do you think those patterns will shape future interpretations of society today?  
  2. Can you think of any other specific historical events that might have influenced the writers to author/publish these sources when they did? Be sure to look at the date documents were published as you explore our collection.
  3. Locate a source speaking about perceptions of the war from the same decade the war took place in, the 1860s, and another source from the turn of the century, the 1900s,  and identify some of the ways in which the language and interpretation of the war have changed over time or have not?
  4. Consider the conversation surrounding the Civil War today, does print and social media today acknowledge the complex history surrounding our "memory" of the war? In what ways is popular media successful in conveying change over time and how could the media improve its coverage on these complex topics?

Secondary Readings

Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. 3. print. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002.

Downs, Gregory P. The Second American Revolution: The Civil War-Era Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2019.

Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1935.

Janney, Caroline E. Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013.

Keely, Karen A. “Marriage Plots and National Reunion: The Trope of Romantic Reconciliation in Postbellum Literature.” The Mississippi Quarterly 51, no. 4 (1998): 621–48.

McCurry, Stephanie. Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2010. 

Rubin, Anne S. A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868. Civil War America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

Taylor, Amy Murrell. Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil Wars Slave Refugee Camps. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020.

 

Questions and Bibliography