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Tag Archives: Civil War
The Country I Remember
David Mason reads from his latest collection of poems, a 12-part verse narrative. The Country I Remember recalls the life of one of Mason’s ancestors, Lt. John Mitchell, who was captured in the Civil War battle of Chickamauga in 1863. The poem also looks back to Mitchell’s daughter, Maggie, who recollects her own life in the shadow of her adventurous father. Joyce Carol Oates has praised the poem for its evocation of powerful and intimate voices.
Getting Right With Lincoln
Andrew Delbanco, editor of The Portable Lincoln, discusses Lincoln, the Civil War, and the Emancipation Proclamation.
Good TV
Ken Burns discusses documentary history and his award-winning PBS production, The Civil War. Robert Schrag discusses his book, Taming the Wild Tube (University of North Carolina Press, 1990).
From Protest to Power: the Recent History of Civil Rights in the United States Part 1
William Chafe is the author of The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II and Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina and the Black Struggle for Freedom (Oxford University Press).
From 1969-1975, Howard Lee was the first black mayor of a predominantly white southern town, Chapel Hill, NC, since the reconstruction. He served as Secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and Community Development under Governor James B. Hunt, Jr., of North Carolina.
American Popular Entertainment
According to Robert Allen, the development of American popular entertainment stems from 19th-century theatrical forms including vaudeville, burlesque, dime museum performances, and circuses. But these forms underwent a fragmentation of audience following the Civil War that reflected social classes as well as notions of art, taste, and decorum. In this fragmentation, vaudeville became a cultural model of popular entertainment that influenced such 20th-century media as film, radio, and television.
Race and Money in the 19th-Century American South
Barbara Bellows discusses her forthcoming book about 19th-century American history, Tempering the Wind: Southern Patriarchs and the Urban Poor.; Jane Censer and Harold Woodman discuss their forthcoming books about economic history and culture in the American south during and after the Civil War. Jane Censer is the author of The Old Elite Faces the New Order: Virginia and North Carolina Planters, 1860-1885. Harold Woodman is the author of The Transformation of the Southern Economy, 1861-1920.
American Beginnings
The origins of two aspects of American cultural and scientific history are the subjects of this episode of Soundings. William Rorabaugh discusses his study of apprenticeship in America, an element in U.S. social history that flourished between the time of the American Revolution and the Civil War. Rorabaugh was a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (1983-84) and, at the time of this interview, professor of history at the University of Washington.
In the second episode [14:00] Seymour Cohen discusses his research on Thomas Cooper (1759-1839), one of the founders of modern scientific inquiry in the U.S. and a man whom President Thomas Jefferson called one of the ablest men in America. Cohen was a Fellow at the NHC (1982-83 and 1984-85) and professor of biochemistry at State University of New York at Stony Brook. This episode of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.
Book Reviews; Beautiful Machine: Rivers in American Literature
A discussion of John Updike’s recent collection of critical essays, Hugging the Shore, and Mordecai Richler’s recent anthology entitled The Best of Modern Humor.; What were the commercial, political, and cultural functions of rivers in the emerging American republic between the time of the French and Indian Wars and the Civil War (1755-1860)? To what extent does an examination of rivers– beautiful machines –in the early American republic reveal patterns, tensions, and paradoxes that underscore Americans’ desire for exploration and expansion on literary and philosophical (as well as geographical) levels?
The Gilded Age Part 2
Following last week’s discussion of the Gilded Age (the period from the end of the Civil War through the turn of the 20th-century), Soundings examines Henry Adams (1838-1918), the American historian viewed by many cultural critics as a sort of intellectual weather vane of his times. Adams reacted to the material developments of the Gilded Age with misgivings, questioning the direction of American Institutions, such as education, science and commerce, and wondered about religion in a time of increasing secularity.
The Gilded Age Part 1; Commentary on Social Progress
In this year of presidential politics, there will be much talk about America’s future, its development or decline as a social structure. But this of course isn’t new. One historical precedent lies in what cultural historians and critics call the Gilded Age, the period following the Civil War and leading to the turn of the 20th-century. What was the Gilded Age? How did it get its name, and what were some of its noteworthy social, political and cultural preoccupations?
Afro-American History
Benjamin Quarles talks about the challenges in 1980 of locating primary resources in his area of scholarship–antislavery movements and the roles of African Americans in the American Revolution and the Civil War. Quarles also comments on the accounts, which were rare, of the contributions of African Americans to early epochs of American history, and the equally rare number of positive fictional portrayals of blacks in early American writing.
At the time of this interview, Quarles was retired professor of history at Morgan State College.
Kent Mullikin, deputy director of the National Humanities Center, participated in this conversation.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.