This course will assess the historical memory of the most divisive event in American history—the Civil War.
Lead Scholar: David Blight, Yale University
Master Teacher: Gena Oppenheim
Image: Civil War recruitment broadside depicting a Union soldier holding a US flag and a banner declaring “Freedom to the Slave,” 1863. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC04198)
Up to 24 PD Hours
This course will assess the historical memory of the most divisive event in American history—the Civil War. We will read secondary works on Civil War memory, engage with some theoretical reading on the nature and significance of collective memory across time and cultures, and then dive deeply into three anniversary moments in this history of memories: the 50th (1911–1915); the 100th (1961–1965); and the recent 150th (2011–2015). The course will also tackle recent and current crises and debates over monuments and symbols from the massacre in Charleston in 2015 to the protests and violence in Charlottesville and beyond. Readings will include works of history and primary documents. Above all the course aims to provide a forum in which to comprehend and analyze why the slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction epoch has been an unending dilemma in American historical consciousness.
Optional Book Talk: If you are interested in Professor Blight’s scholarship but want to take a different course at the Teacher Symposium, you may attend his book talk on Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Symposium participants attending the optional book talks can earn additional PD credit.
“Reading the Emancipation Proclamation” by H. W. Herrick, published by Lucius Stebbins, Hartford, CT, 1864. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC07595)
David W. Blight is a teacher, scholar and public historian. At Yale University he is Sterling Professor of History and the director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. In his capacity as director of the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale, Blight organizes conferences, working groups, lectures, the administering of the annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize, and many public outreach programs regarding the history of slavery and its abolition. His biography Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom garnered nine book awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. Blight works in many capacities in the world of public history, including on boards of museums and historical societies, and as a member of a small team of advisors to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum team of curators. In 2018, Blight was appointed by the Georgia Historical Society as a Vincent J. Dooley Distinguished Teaching Fellow, which recognizes national leaders in the field of history as both writers and educators whose research has enhanced or changed the way the public understands the past.
Gena Oppenheim is a theater, film, and interdisciplinary studies teacher at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, NY. A graduate of Barnard College and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, she currently serves as the senior education fellow for the Hamilton Education Program at the Gilder Lehrman Institute.