Yesterday Brooks Simpson offered a brief reflection on why he spends time at Civil War battlefields. He also asks of his readers why they visit these places. Back in 2008 I was invited to give the keynote address at the National Park Services’s [FSNMP] annual commemoration in Fredericksburg. I took the opportunity to share why [...]
Civil War Memory Class
Today I am teaching my final class on the American Civil War at the St. Anne’s – Belfield School. It’s not going to be a memorable class by any stretch of the imagination; we’ve been looking at film for much of the trimester and today we need to wrap up the last scene of Shirley [...]
This week I will be working with a group of 4th and 5th grade teachers as part of a Teaching American History workshop on the Civil War and historical memory. This time around I am teamed up with historian, W. Fitzhugh Brundage of the University of North Carolina, who will take care of the morning [...]
Teaching the Civil War in central Virginia offers an interesting perspective on the continuing evolution of our collective memory of the war. My current course on the Civil War and historical memory includes students from the surrounding counties of Fluvanna and Greene as well as students who grew up in Charlottesville. Many of the students [...]
Well, it’s early Sunday morning and I am sitting in my office preparing my classes for the start of a new trimester. Once again, I am teaching an elective called, Civil War Memory, which I’ve offered over the past three years. The course has taken different forms from a standard readings course to a course [...]
Last night I took part in a community forum on the Civil War Sesquicentennial with Waite Rawls, III, Executive Director of the Museum of the Confederacy and Christy Coleman, President of the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar. The event took place in Alberta at the Southside Virginia Community College and was organized by [...]
This is an incredibly helpful video that compiles all of Shelby Foote’s interviews from Ken Burns’s The Civil War. I use The Civil War extensively in my elective courses on the Civil War and Civil War Memory. It is still in my mind the best Civil War documentary available.
I received the following email a few days ago from an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, who is planning to write her senior thesis on Civil War memory. While I am flattered that this student is asking me for my advice, it seems silly not to tap the interests and experiences of my many readers. Your [...]
