The Civil War in American Memory
H&G2-10-Tue2
Vince Canzoneri
This course will take place virtually on Zoom. Participation in this course requires a device (ideally a computer or tablet, rather than a cell phone) with a camera and microphone in good working order and basic familiarity with using Zoom and accessing email
September 10 - November 12
The Civil War was perhaps the most traumatic event in American History and the contentious ways in which we remember the Civil War continue to inform our civil discourse to this day. How people remember the Civil War varies widely. The focus of this course is what Yale history professor David Blight calls “collective memory – the ways in which groups, peoples, or nations construct versions of the past and employ them for self-understanding and to win power in an ever-changing present.” How did foundational Civil War memories develop during the 5 decades (1865-1915) following the war? We will use David Blight’s 2002 book Race and Reunion – The Civil War in American Memory, as our guide to learn about three historically informed and competing visions. These are the emancipationist vision of Frederick Douglas and W.E.B. Du Bois; the white supremacist vision of the “Lost Cause,” illustrated by D.W. Griffiths’ Birth of a Nation and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind; and the reunionist vision that ultimately reconciled Whites from North and South at the cost of consigning Blacks to re-enslavement through Jim Crow. Finally we will consider the uses of Civil War memories in the ensuing century, through writings of Robert Penn Warren, Bruce Catton, Edmund Wilson and James Baldwin; the West Point historian Ty Seidule who struggled to exorcize the Academy from the ghost Robert E. Lee; responses to Brown v. Board of Education and Ken Burns’ Civil War.
More facilitated discussion than lecture.
Required purchase: Race and Reunion – The Civil War in American Memory by David W. Blight – Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2001 ISBN 0-674-00819-7. Supplementary materials will be provided by the SGL via email and/or google site.
2-3 hours per week, fifty to sixty pages per week plus some supplementary materials.
Vince Canzoneri is a semi-retired lawyer. Before attending law school, he worked as an on-air pop-culture critic for WGBH-TV’s Ten O’clock News and writer-producer of short documentary films for WCVB-TV’s Chronicle. His reading interests include the history and analysis of American popular culture.