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...