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Tag Archives: David Blight
Understanding History Through Addition, Not Subtraction, on Civil War Battlefields
Last Wednesday, I reported on a provision in the Department of the Interior’s 2021 spending bill that would, if approved by Congress and signed into law by the president, remove Confederate statues from national parks. “It’s a top priority of … Continue reading
BookChat with Cody Marrs, author of Not Even Past
As a big fan of the Civil War in pop culture, I was especially looking forward to Cody Marrs’ new book Not Even Past: The Stories We Keep Telling About the Civil War, which deals with the ways “the story … Continue reading
Posted in Books & Authors, Civil War in Pop Culture, Lincoln, Memory, Politics, Reconstruction, Slavery
Tagged Alice Fahs, Birth of a Nation, BookChat, Cody Marrs, D. W. Griffith, David Blight, Edward Pollard, emancipation, Evelyn Scott, Fire on the Mountain, Gary Gallagher, Gone with the Wind, Johns Hopkins University Press, Jubilee, Lioncoln, Margaret Walker, Mark Twain, Memory, Not Even Past, Reconstruction, Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane, Terry Bisson, The Lost Cause, The Wave, W.E.B. DuBois, William Faulkner
2 Comments
Unintentional Reconciliation – Memorializing the Cavalry Fight at Gettysburg
Though not far from the Civil War’s memorial epicenter, the cavalry battlefield at Gettysburg National Military Park sits relatively undisturbed by the crowds of tourists who come to see the site of the largest ever battle in the Western Hemisphere. … Continue reading
Posted in Battlefields & Historic Places, Memory
Tagged 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry, battlefield monuments, Caroline Janney, Cavalry at Gettysburg, David Blight, David M. Gregg, Gaines M. Foster, George A. Custer, Gettysburg, Gettysburg Anniversary, JEB Stuart, memorials, Pickett's Charge, Reconciliation, William Brooke Rawle
6 Comments
Telling History vs. Making Art: The ways we remember the war
Part two in a series “We may say that only at the moment when Lee handed Grant his sword was the Confederacy born,” wrote Robert Penn Warren during the Civil War’s centennial; “or to state matters another way, in the … Continue reading
Posted in Books & Authors, Memory, Personalities, Slavery
Tagged Albert Sydney Johnston, David Blight, David O. Selznick, Emancipation Cause, Gary Gallagher, Gone with the Wind, History-vs-Art, Ken Burns, Lost Cause, Reconciliation Cause, Robert E. Lee, Robert Penn Warren, Shiloh, slavery, states' rights, Stonewall Jackson, Telling History vs. Making Art, The Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant, Union Cause
1 Comment
Telling History vs. Making Art: “a tension between Art and Science”
Part one in a series As a battlefield guide at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park (FSNMP), I frequently speak with folks who’ve come to the battlefields because they’ve read The Killer Angels, which in turn inspired them to come … Continue reading
Posted in Books & Authors, Memory, National Park Service
Tagged Bruce Catton, David Blight, David McCullough, Gary Gallagher, Gettysburg, Gods & Generals, Gone with the Wind, History-vs-Art, Jeff Shaara, Ken Burns, Michael Shaara, National Park Service, NPS, Scott Hartwig, Shelby Foote, Telling History vs. Making Art, The Civil War: A Narrative, The Killer Angels
8 Comments
American Oracle and the dangers of political fanaticism
Reading David Blight’s American Oracle this weekend, I’ve noticed a subtle, cautionary note that keeps playing itself as an occasional undertone. It reminds me again why the study of history has something to tell us about current events—and also that no one … Continue reading
Posted in Books & Authors, Memory, Politics
Tagged American Oracle, Bruce Catton, centennial, David Blight, Memory, Robert Penn Warren, Sesquicentennial, writers
4 Comments
Race and Reunion 10 Years Later: Restoring Reunion (Anew)
Final part in a series The contributions of David Blight’s Race and Reunion to the scholarship on Reconstruction and historical memory are undeniably some of the most valuable (and most-cited) in contemporary historiography on the American Civil War. Perhaps more … Continue reading
Posted in Books & Authors, Memory, Reconstruction, Slavery
Tagged David Blight, Memory, Race and Reunion, Race-and-Reunion-series, Reconstruction
3 Comments
Race and Reunion 10 Years Later: The PR Battles for Public Opinion and Memory
Part three in a series As a communications professor and former public relations guy, it’s hard for me to look at memory studies as anything but public relations cases. After all, public memory starts as public opinion, and public opinion … Continue reading
Race & Reunion 10 Years Later: The Power of Interpretation and Explanation
Part two in a series Authored by James Broomall. In thinking about David Blight’s sweeping study, Race and Reunion, I am drawn to its interpretive and explanatory powers, especially as a teaching instrument. In describing how Americans’ “remembered their … Continue reading
Posted in Books & Authors, Memory, Reconstruction, Slavery
Tagged David Blight, Memory, Race and Reunion, Race-and-Reunion-series, Reconstruction
2 Comments
Race and Reunion 10 Years Later: “Reconciliationist” Memory Trumps “Emancipationist” Memory
Part one in a series With a decade of perspective on which to draw, it’s clear that David Blight’s Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001) represented both a culmination of and shift within Civil War memory … Continue reading
Posted in Books & Authors, Memory, Reconstruction, Slavery
Tagged David Blight, Memory, Race and Reunion, Race-and-Reunion-series, Reconstruction
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