Writing the Civil War as History and Fiction
805 views · Published 27 March 2014 · 46:29 · Indexed 19 October 2026
Channel: GBH Forum Network · 2014 · Education
Richard Slotkin, historian and cultural critic, explores the retelling of the story of the Civil War. "Every generation since 1865 retells the tale as a way of placing itself in relation to what is perhaps the defining moment in the development of America as a nation-state," he argues. Slotkin, professor of English and American Studies at Wesleyan University and a frequent consultant and on-air commentator about the Civil War, talks about his own fascination with the subject, and "how Americans choose to remember or forget the war defines us." He also discusses his book The Crater: A Novel of the Civil War. This event is presented as part of the Lowell Humanities Lecture Series.
More from this channel
-
2:34
Shawn Kelly: Bionic Being and the New Prosthetics
-
1:00:11
Dambisa Moyo: "How the West was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly"
-
1:00:00
Edward Glaeser: "Triumph of the City"
-
44:01
Amir Aczel: "Present at the Creation: The Story of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider"
-
54:08
Izzeldin Abuelaish: "A Gaza Doctor on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity"
-
1:00:02
Kenji Yoshino - Uncovering the Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights
-
56:56
David Kennedy - Of War and Law
-
1:13:20
Lobsang Sanjay - Tibet: Lens on Human Rights in China