The Civil War in Popular Culture
The Civil War in Popular Culture

Author: Lawrence A. Kreiser Jr.

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2014-01-14

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0813143225

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Dividing the nation for four years, the American Civil War resulted in 750,000 casualties and forever changed the country's destiny. The conflict continues to resonate in our collective memory, and U.S. economic, cultural, and social structures still suffer the aftershocks of the nation's largest and most devastating war. Nearly 150 years later, portrayals of the war in books, songs, cinema, and other cultural media continue to draw widespread attention and controversy. In The Civil War in Popular Culture: Memory and Meaning, editors Lawrence A. Kreiser Jr. and Randal Allred analyze American depictions of the war across a variety of mediums, from books and film, to monuments and battlefield reunions, to reenactments and board games. This collection examines how battle strategies, famous generals, and the nuances of Civil War politics translate into contemporary popular culture. This unique analysis assesses the intersection of the Civil War and popular culture by recognizing how memories and commemorations of the war have changed since it ended in 1865.

CIVIL WAR IN POP CULTURE
CIVIL WAR IN POP CULTURE

Author: CULLEN J

Publisher: Smithsonian Books (DC)

Published: 1995-03-17

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13:

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In The Civil War in Popular Culture, Jim Cullen explores popular interpretations of the war during the twentieth century, in the process revealing much about the cultural legacy of that conflict.

The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture
The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture

Author: Alice Fahs

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2005-10-12

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0807875813

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The Civil War retains a powerful hold on the American imagination, with each generation since 1865 reassessing its meaning and importance in American life. This volume collects twelve essays by leading Civil War scholars who demonstrate how the meanings of the Civil War have changed over time. The essays move among a variety of cultural and political arenas--from public monuments to parades to political campaigns; from soldiers' memoirs to textbook publishing to children's literature--in order to reveal important changes in how the memory of the Civil War has been employed in American life. Setting the politics of Civil War memory within a wide social and cultural landscape, this volume recovers not only the meanings of the war in various eras, but also the specific processes by which those meanings have been created. By recounting the battles over the memory of the war during the last 140 years, the contributors offer important insights about our identities as individuals and as a nation. Contributors: David W. Blight, Yale University Thomas J. Brown, University of South Carolina Alice Fahs, University of California, Irvine Gary W. Gallagher, University of Virginia J. Matthew Gallman, University of Florida Patrick J. Kelly, University of Texas, San Antonio Stuart McConnell, Pitzer College James M. McPherson, Princeton University Joan Waugh, University of California, Los Angeles LeeAnn Whites, University of Missouri Jon Wiener, University of California, Irvine

Entertaining History
Entertaining History

Author: Chris Mackowski

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press

Published: 2020-01-13

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0809337576

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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. From Ulysses S. Grant’s Memoirs to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, from Roots to Ken Burns’s The Civil War, from “Dixie” to “Ashokan Farewell,” and from Civil War photography to the Gettysburg Cyclorama, trendy and well-loved depictions of the Civil War are the subjects of twenty contributors who tell how they and the general public have been influenced by them. Sarah Kay Bierle examines the eternal appeal of Gone with the Wind and asks how it is that a protagonist who so opposed the war has become such a figurehead for it. H. R. Gordon talks with New York Times–bestselling novelist Jeff Shaara to discuss the power of storytelling. Paul Ashdown explores ColdMountain’s value as a portrait of the war as national upheaval, and Kevin Pawlak traces a shift in cinema’s depiction of slavery epitomized by 12 Years a Slave. Tony Horwitz revisits his iconic Confederates in the Attic twenty years later. The contributors’ fresh analysis articulates a shared passion for history’s representation in the popular media. The variety of voices and topics in this collection coalesces into a fascinating discussion of some of the most popular texts in the genres. In keeping with the innovative nature of this series, web-exclusive material extends the conversation beyond the book.

The Civil War in Popular Culture
The Civil War in Popular Culture

Author: Lawrence A. Kreiser

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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Dividing the nation for four years, the American Civil War resulted in 750,000 casualties and forever changed the country's destiny. The conflict continues to resonate in our collective memory, and U.S. economic, cultural, and social structures still suffer the aftershocks of the nation's largest and most devastating war. Nearly 150 years later, portrayals of the war in books, songs, cinema, and other cultural media continue to draw widespread attention and controversy. In The Civil War in Popular Culture: Memory and Meaning, editors Lawrence A. Kreiser Jr. and Randal Allred analyze American ...

The Civil War and Pop Culture
The Civil War and Pop Culture

Author: Chris Mackowski

Publisher: Savas Beatie

Published: 2023-07-28

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1611216362

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The American Civil War left indelible marks on America’s imagination, collectively and as individuals. In the century and a half since the war, musicians have written songs, writers have crafted histories and literature, and filmmakers recreated scenes from the battlefield. Beyond popular media, the battle rages on during sporting events where Civil War-inspired mascots carry on old traditions. The war erupts on tabletops and computer screens as gamers fight the old fights. Elsewhere, men and women dress in uniforms and home-spun clothes to don the mantel of people long gone. Central to “history” is the idea of “story.” Civil War history remains full of stories. They inspire us, they inform us, they educate us, they entertain us. We all have our favorite books, movies, and songs. We all marvel at the spectacle of a reenactment—and flinch with startled delight when the cannons fire. But those stories can fool us, too. Entertainments can seduce us into forgetting the actual history in favor of a more romanticized version or whitewashed memory. The Civil War and Pop Culture: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War explores some of the ways people have imagined and re-imaged the war, at the tension between history and art, and how those visions have left lasting marks on American culture. This collection of essays brings together the best scholarship from Emerging Civil War’s blog, symposia, and podcast—all of it revised and updated—coupled with original piece, designed to shed new light and insight on some of the most entertaining, nostalgic, and evocative connections we have to the war.

Gender and Race in Antebellum Popular Culture
Gender and Race in Antebellum Popular Culture

Author: Sarah N. Roth

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-07-21

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 1139992805

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In the decades leading to the Civil War, popular conceptions of African American men shifted dramatically. The savage slave featured in 1830s' novels and stories gave way by the 1850s to the less-threatening humble black martyr. This radical reshaping of black masculinity in American culture occurred at the same time that the reading and writing of popular narratives were emerging as largely feminine enterprises. In a society where women wielded little official power, white female authors exalted white femininity, using narrative forms such as autobiographies, novels, short stories, visual images, and plays, by stressing differences that made white women appear superior to male slaves. This book argues that white women, as creators and consumers of popular culture media, played a pivotal role in the demasculinization of black men during the antebellum period, and consequently had a vital impact on the political landscape of antebellum and Civil War-era America through their powerful influence on popular culture.

The Imagined Civil War
The Imagined Civil War

Author: Alice Fahs

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2010-03-15

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 0807899291

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In this groundbreaking work of cultural history, Alice Fahs explores a little-known and fascinating side of the Civil War--the outpouring of popular literature inspired by the conflict. From 1861 to 1865, authors and publishers in both the North and the South produced a remarkable variety of war-related compositions, including poems, songs, children's stories, romances, novels, histories, and even humorous pieces. Fahs mines these rich but long-neglected resources to recover the diversity of the war's political and social meanings. Instead of narrowly portraying the Civil War as a clash between two great, white armies, popular literature offered a wide range of representations of the conflict and helped shape new modes of imagining the relationships of diverse individuals to the nation. Works that explored the war's devastating impact on white women's lives, for example, proclaimed the importance of their experiences on the home front, while popular writings that celebrated black manhood and heroism in the wake of emancipation helped readers begin to envision new roles for blacks in American life. Recovering a lost world of popular literature, The Imagined Civil War adds immeasurably to our understanding of American life and letters at a pivotal point in our history.

Civil War in American Culture
Civil War in American Culture

Author: Will Kaufman

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2006-03-30

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0748626565

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The Civil War is an event of great cultural significance, impacting upon American literature, film, music, electronic media, the marketplace and public performance. This book takes an innovative approach to this great event in American history, exploring its cultural origins and enduring cultural legacy. It focuses upon the place of the Civil War across the broad sweep of American cultural forms and practices and reveals important links between historical events and contemporary culture.The first chapter introduces a discussion of ante-bellum culture and the part cultural forces played in the sectional crisis that exploded into full-blown war in 1861. Subsequent chapters focus on particular themes, appropriations, interpretations and manifestations of the War as they have appeared in American culture.