Tag: gender

Formal headshot portrait of woman in black top.

Congratulations to the 2023 Anne Braden Prize Winner

The Southern Historical Association is delighted to announce the winner of the Anne Braden Prize: Kimberly Welch, “The Stability of Fortunes: A Free Black Woman, Her Legacy, and the Legal Archive in Antebellum New Orleans,” JOURNAL OF THE CIVIL WAR ERA 12 (December 2022): 473-502. This prize, which was first ...
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Women and Gender History of the Civil War Era: A Roundtable

Women and Gender History of the Civil War Era: A Roundtable

We are delighted to publish three essays on women’s history of the Civil War Era by three leading scholars in the field. This roundtable draws on a lively session at last summer’s Society of Civil War Historians conference. Together these pieces provide a wide-ranging assessment of the field as a ...
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The Gendered Consequences of Legislation Targeting Critical Race Theory

When Professor Silber asked us to reflect on what it means to study women and gender in the Civil War era, the news in the state of Texas, but also in other states, centered on efforts in the legislature to restrict what we teach in American history and the theoretical ...
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Why We Should Forget the Civil War

Nearly twenty years ago, now, in a 2002 review essay on women in the Civil War, Thavolia Glymph concluded that “the period of the Civil War and Reconstruction remains the most racially gendered and regionally segregated historiographical space in US history.”  Surveying the first wave of literature on the period ...
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Introductory Remarks: The Study of Gender and the Civil War

When we began planning for the SCWH 2020 conference, one critical component of our planning entailed a special plenary that would survey the field of gender and Civil War history.  This is a field of long-standing interest for me, going back to the publication of the co-edited collection I did ...
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When John Brooke Came Marching Home Again, Hurrah?

When John Brooke Came Marching Home Again, Hurrah?

“When John got out his books that night, Meg's heart sank, and for the first time in her married life, she was afraid of her husband.”[1] Judy Giesberg recently reminded Muster readers how much the Civil War shrouds Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, in print and on screen. The ...
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Castles in the Air: A Review of Greta Gerwig’s <i>Little Women</i>

Castles in the Air: A Review of Greta Gerwig’s Little Women

Impatient for Greta Gerwig’s Little Women to come out, I watched the 1994 movie again to bide my time. Susan Sarandon (Marmee) and Winona Ryder (Jo) steal the show, delivering the movie’s most memorable lines critiquing Victorian gender expectations, such as when Marmee dismisses a neighbor’s concerns about her daughters’ ...
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Author Interview: Timothy Williams

Author Interview: Timothy Williams

Our December 2018 issue featured top-notch work on the Civil War era, including a fascinating piece by Timothy Williams, titled "The Readers' South: Literature, Region, and Identity in the Civil War Era." We share below a recent interview with Dr. Williams, who is an assistant professor of history at the ...
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Democratic political cartoon showing “fanatics” making demands of a compliant John C. Frémont, the 1856 Republican presidential candidate. Source: “The Great Republican Reform Party, Calling on Their Candidate” (New York, NY: [Nathaniel Currier], [1856]), Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Interracial Sex and American Conservatism, from the Civil War Era to the Age of Trump

Gender and race are center stage in the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton, for instance, hopes to derail Donald Trump's recent pivot to the center and his courting of African Americans by linking him to the white nationalist “alt-right” movement. The current election has thereby brought national attention to the Internet’s ...
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Cold Mountain: The Civil War’s Night at the Opera

Cold Mountain: The Civil War’s Night at the Opera

“War chisels your soul with fear and bitterness into something dark and strange. Hard to find your way back in so much darkness, from so much pain” – Inman (Act II, Scene X) On Friday night, February 5, 2016, Cold Mountain made its Philadelphia debut at the Academy of Music ...
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Inside the Making of PBS’s “Mercy Street:” An Interview with Professor Jane E. Schultz, Historical Consultant

Inside the Making of PBS’s “Mercy Street:” An Interview with Professor Jane E. Schultz, Historical Consultant

For this post, Muster interviewed Dr. Jane E. Schultz, Professor of English at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis about her experience working with the producers of Mercy Street. We thank her for granting us this interview. Please also note that this interview contains a brief spoiler for Episode Two, "The Haversack" ...
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PBS’s Mercy Street: Series Premiere “The New Nurse” Offers More Than Blue and Gray’s Anatomy

Mercy Street, Ridley Scott’s, fresh, compelling six-part drama captures the gritty, dangerous experience of medical caregiving during the Civil War. The series debuts January 17th on PBS, immediately following Downton Abbey. Set inside Mansion House Hotel, a makeshift hospital in Alexandria, Virginia in 1862, Mercy Street is narrated from the ...
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