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Civil
War Conference at U.Va. Will Explore Connections Between Home and
the Battlefield
January
15, 1999 -- The College of Arts and Sciences at the
University of Virginia will sponsor a major conference on the Civil
War and its complex effects on 19th century American life April
29-May 1.
Gary
W. Gallagher, U.Va. professor of Civil War history and conference
organizer, will gather seven other noted Civil War history experts
to discuss military, social, political and cultural aspects of the
conflict and its era. A main aim of the conference is to show the
important interplay between military and non-military dimensions
of the war to gain a better understanding of its full complexity,
Gallagher said.
Topics,
for example, will include the comparative experience of common people
in the North and South, the myriad connections between the home
front and the battlefield, the centrality of emancipation, and the
ways in which women understood and reacted to the war.
Conference
participants and their themes include:
--
Catherine Clinton, the Lewis P. Jones Visiting Professor of History
at Wofford College and an authority on women and the war: "Divided
Countrywomen: Gender and Allegiance During the Civil War"
--
William J. Cooper Jr., the Boyd Professor of History at Louisiana
State University who has written widely about the politics of slavery:
"Jefferson Davis and the Politics of Confederate Command"
--
Edward L. Ayers, the Hugh P. Kelly Professor of History at U.Va.
and director of "The Valley of the Shadow," an award-winning interactive
database project about the war: "The Civil War From the Ground Up:
A Northern and Southern Community in the Great Valley"
--
Joseph T. Glathaar, professor of history at the University of Houston,
a specialist in military history: "Building the Army of Northern
Virginia"
--
Thavolia T. Glymph, professor of history at Penn State University,
an expert on emancipation and the postbellum South: "In Abraham's
Bosom and Under the Protection of the Star Spangled Banner: Slave
Women and the Civil War"
--
John J. Hennessy, National Park Service historian who has written
widely about the war: "War Within A War: The Army of the Potomac
Debates Union War Aims"
--
Philip Shaw Paludan, professor of history at the University of Kansas
and author of a key book on Lincoln: "McClellan, Grant and Sherman:
Images of Modernization in the Civil War Era"
The
conference will begin Thursday, April 29, with a lecture by Gallagher,
a leading authority on the war's military history and its aftermath
and author of numerous books including "The Confederate War." His
talk will be titled "An Old-Fashioned General in a Modern War? Another
Look at Robert E. Lee as a Confederate Leader."
The
opening lecture will be held at Alumni Hall and will be followed
by a reception. Friday and Saturday day-long programs will be in
Newcomb Hall Ballroom.
The
conference is open to the public. Registration is $75 for the entire
conference, or $50 for one day. The conference is free to U.Va.
students and faculty.
(Pictured
above: Woodcut of a sketch drawn by Frank Vizetelly, which appeared
in Harper's Weekly Jan. 9, 1864, civilians in Charleston, S.C.,
scatter as a Union artillery shell bursts.)
Contact:
(800) 346-3882.
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