Beginning this fall, Chattanooga will serve as a host to Making Sense of the American Civil War, a scholar-led reading and discussion program. The program is organized as a five-part series of conversations that aim to get below the surface of familiar stories about the Civil War battles to explore the complex challenges brought on by the war.
“We are partnering with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association to bring another great program to Tennessee communities,” said Melissa Davis, Humanities Tennessee’s director of the Tennessee Community History Program. “This program delves deeply into experiences from multiple perspectives and includes a variety of reading selections.”
The reading and discussion program focuses on making sense of the breadth and depth of the American Civil War. The five conversations that make up the program are:
Imaging War:
This first part of the series compares fiction and firsthand testimony using the novel “March” by Geraldine Brooks, which tells its story through the character of Reverend March from Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women,” and an excerpt from Alcott’s journal. The readings illuminate how the war challenges individuals’ beliefs and reveals personal experiences amongst the nation’s chaos.
Choosing Sides:
The primary documents discussed in this conversation ask the reader to imagine confronting one’s notion of justice, honor, duty, loyalty and hypocrisy in making personal political decisions on the eve of the Civil War era.
Making Sense of Shiloh:
There’s more than one side to every story, and the horrific Battle of Shiloh is no exception. This conversation dives deeper than the facts and figures of the battle to explore the impact it had on Americans by looking at a variety of battlefield perspectives.
The Shape of War:
Three readings demonstrate the variety of interpretations of Antietam and challenge the reader to shift the focus from the course of the battle and its ramifications to the suffering of the individuals and the way death was confronted.
War and Freedom: This final set of readings focuses on the emancipation of four million slaves and addresses both the politics of emancipation and the long course toward liberty and security by freed people.
The program will begin in Tennessee at the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Bicentennial Library on September 18. The series will continue over a ten-week period and will then move on to Memphis, Clarksville and Morristown.
Source: Humanities Tennessee