HIS 531SEM - Readings in the Civil War & Reconstruction

This course will familiarize graduate students with some of the major issues and problems in the history of the American Civil War and Reconstruction. This course is not comprehensive; no course on such a vast and contested topic could be. However, the readings are intended to be provocative and challenge students to think not only about the more conventional questions circulating about the war (e.g. What were the causes of the Civil War?) but also new questions about race, gender, and historical memory. The readings will expose students to the varieties of methodologies and narrative strategies that writers of history use and that might serve as models for their own work. Topics to be covered include: abolitionism and slavery in national politics, slavery in pre-war southern society, the idea of Unionism, the politics of emancipation, the writing of battlefield history and the conceptualization of the civil war, manhood and war, gender and emancipation, the legacy of slavery and Reconstruction, and the continued struggles over the war’s memorialization.

Credits: 3