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Remixing the Civil War: Meditations on the Sesquicentennial
In 1961, the historian and poet Robert Penn Warren remarked that “the Civil War is, for the American imagination, the great single event of our history.” This volume reconsiders whether, fifty years later, Warren’s claim still holds true.

Essays from specialists in art, literature, and history examine how contemporary culture represents and interprets the Civil War. They look at the works of more than thirty artists and writers as well as multiple movements—political and social—to reveal the many and provocative ways in which Americans engage the Civil War today. The book includes chapters on the place of Abraham Lincoln in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, controversies over the symbolism of the Confederate flag, and the proliferation of "Juneteenth" observances.

Remixing the Civil War pays special attention to the works of African Americans and white southerners, for whom the Civil War was a revolutionary and defining moment. Such prominent scholars as Robert H. Brinkmeyer Jr., W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Kirk Savage, and Elizabeth Young explore the works of major artists and lesser-known figures, including Bobbie Ann Mason, Kara Walker, Dario Robleto, and John Huddleston. The authors find that Americans today openly and playfully manipulate familiar images of the Civil War to explore the malleability and permeability of traditional social categories like national identity, gender, and race.

This collection continues the conversation Warren began fifty years ago, although taking it in unorthodox and challenging directions, to offer fresh and stimulating perspectives on the war’s presence in the collective imagination of the nation.

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Remixing the Civil War: Meditations on the Sesquicentennial
In 1961, the historian and poet Robert Penn Warren remarked that “the Civil War is, for the American imagination, the great single event of our history.” This volume reconsiders whether, fifty years later, Warren’s claim still holds true.

Essays from specialists in art, literature, and history examine how contemporary culture represents and interprets the Civil War. They look at the works of more than thirty artists and writers as well as multiple movements—political and social—to reveal the many and provocative ways in which Americans engage the Civil War today. The book includes chapters on the place of Abraham Lincoln in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, controversies over the symbolism of the Confederate flag, and the proliferation of "Juneteenth" observances.

Remixing the Civil War pays special attention to the works of African Americans and white southerners, for whom the Civil War was a revolutionary and defining moment. Such prominent scholars as Robert H. Brinkmeyer Jr., W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Kirk Savage, and Elizabeth Young explore the works of major artists and lesser-known figures, including Bobbie Ann Mason, Kara Walker, Dario Robleto, and John Huddleston. The authors find that Americans today openly and playfully manipulate familiar images of the Civil War to explore the malleability and permeability of traditional social categories like national identity, gender, and race.

This collection continues the conversation Warren began fifty years ago, although taking it in unorthodox and challenging directions, to offer fresh and stimulating perspectives on the war’s presence in the collective imagination of the nation.

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Remixing the Civil War: Meditations on the Sesquicentennial

Remixing the Civil War: Meditations on the Sesquicentennial

by Thomas J. Brown (Editor)
Remixing the Civil War: Meditations on the Sesquicentennial

Remixing the Civil War: Meditations on the Sesquicentennial

by Thomas J. Brown (Editor)

Overview

In 1961, the historian and poet Robert Penn Warren remarked that “the Civil War is, for the American imagination, the great single event of our history.” This volume reconsiders whether, fifty years later, Warren’s claim still holds true.

Essays from specialists in art, literature, and history examine how contemporary culture represents and interprets the Civil War. They look at the works of more than thirty artists and writers as well as multiple movements—political and social—to reveal the many and provocative ways in which Americans engage the Civil War today. The book includes chapters on the place of Abraham Lincoln in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, controversies over the symbolism of the Confederate flag, and the proliferation of "Juneteenth" observances.

Remixing the Civil War pays special attention to the works of African Americans and white southerners, for whom the Civil War was a revolutionary and defining moment. Such prominent scholars as Robert H. Brinkmeyer Jr., W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Kirk Savage, and Elizabeth Young explore the works of major artists and lesser-known figures, including Bobbie Ann Mason, Kara Walker, Dario Robleto, and John Huddleston. The authors find that Americans today openly and playfully manipulate familiar images of the Civil War to explore the malleability and permeability of traditional social categories like national identity, gender, and race.

This collection continues the conversation Warren began fifty years ago, although taking it in unorthodox and challenging directions, to offer fresh and stimulating perspectives on the war’s presence in the collective imagination of the nation.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781421402512
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date: 11/15/2011
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 256
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Thomas J. Brown is an associate professor of history at the University of South Carolina and editor of The Public Art of Civil War Commemoration: A Brief History with Documents and Reconstructions: New Perspectives on the Postbellum United States.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Introduction. The Undead War
Chapter 1.The Lincoln- Obama Moment
Chapter 2. The Confederate Battle Flag and the Desertion of the Lost Cause Tradition
Chapter 3. Celebrating Freedom: Juneteenth and the Emancipation Festival Tradition
Chapter 4. The Civil War and Contemporary Southern Literature
Chapter 5. Lincoln and the Civil War in Twenty-First-Century Photography
Chapter 6. Reenactment and Relic: The Civil War in Contemporary Art
Chapter 7. African American Artists Interpret the Civil War in a Post-Soul Age
Afterword: War/Memory/History: Toward a Remixed Understanding
Acknowledgments
Notes
List of Contributors
Index

What People are Saying About This

David W. Blight

The nation needs this kind of jarring, probing look at all the fragmented artistic expression that the Civil War continues to stimulate.

From the Publisher

The nation needs this kind of jarring, probing look at all the fragmented artistic expression that the Civil War continues to stimulate.
—David W. Blight, Yale University

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Related Subjects

History
United States History
19th Century United States History - Civil War
United States Civil War - General & Miscellaneous
History
United States History
19th Century United States History - Civil War
United States Civil War - General & Miscellaneous

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