The Civil War and Pop Culture: An Introduction

It’s a new year, and there’s a new book ready shipping soon from Southern Illinois University Press, adding another volume to the Engaging The Civil War Series! We’ve been working on this project for several years, and the ECW authors can’t wait to see the new essay collection in print. Meet the newest book for the ECW shelves: Entertaining History: The Civil War in Literature, Film, and Song.

Popular media can spark the national consciousness in a way that captures people’s attention, interests them in history, and inspires them to visit battlefields, museums, and historic sites. This lively collection of essays and feature stories celebrates the novels, popular histories, magazines, movies, television shows, photography, and songs that have enticed Americans to learn more about our most dramatic historical era.

To celebrate the forthcoming book and start some discussions here on the blog, we’re launching a special blog series focusing on the Civil War and Pop Culture. We’ll be talking about films, documentaries, music, books, and much more. How these “popular takes” on history have fueled the imagination, sparked memory wars, and become part of the saga of looking at Civil War history. How do people interact with history? How has it changed through the decades? How has it shaped historiography and how events are remembered?

Get ready and grab some coffee (or popcorn) because ECW is off to the movies, the library, and the record store to explore historical events and how they have been interpreted, told and re-told in pop culture!