CIVIL WAR READING AND DISCUSSION PROGRAM BEGINS AT MORRISTOWN LIBRARY

Posted on Monday, January 14, 2013 at 9:43 am

CIVIL WAR READING AND DISCUSSION PROGRAM BEGINS AT MORRISTOWN LIBRARY

First part of series scheduled to take place Thursday, Feb. 7, from 6-8 p.m., focusing on “Imagining War”

 

Morristown, Tenn.  – Beginning Thursday, Feb. 7, Morristown-Hamblen Public Library will host Making Sense of the American Civil War, a scholar-led reading and discussion program. This program is organized as a five-part series of conversations that aim to get below the surface of familiar stories about the Civil War battles to explore the complex challenges brought on by the war.  The discussions will be lead by Dr. Nancy Schurr, professor of history at the University of Tennessee.

 

The conversation begins with Geraldine Brooks’ novel March, a meditation on America as it faces the plague of war. Brooks tells its story through the characters of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved Little Women, but shifts the attention to the father of these famed sisters, Reverend March. The novel compares fiction and firsthand testimony from Alcott herself to illuminate the challenges war presents to individuals’ beliefs.

 

Through the eyes of Reverend March, we will begin to understand the confusion and the turmoil facing individuals amongst the nation’s chaos, as they are thrust into battle both on the field and with themselves. Both the fictional story of March and the non- fictional accounts detailed from Alcott’s diary unravel the dramatic impact the war had in molding personal experiences.

 

“Imagining War” is part of a five-part series that will dive into truly making sense of the breadth and depth of the American Civil War. Other towns which have hosted the ten-week series include Chattanooga, Memphis, and Clarksville.

 

The series will be available at the Morristown-Hamblen Public Library on the following topics and dates:

Feb. 21: Choosing Sides – The primary documents discussed in this conversation present the reader with the opportunity to see through the eyes of people who were firsthand dealing with the notions of justice, honor, duty, loyalty and hypocrisy.

March 7: Making Sense of Shiloh – There’s always more than one side to every story, and the horrific Battle of Shiloh is no exception. This conversation dives deeper than the facts and figures of the battle itself, but instead explores the shattering impact the battle had upon Americans in the Civil War by looking at a variety of battlefield perspectives.

March 21: The Shape of War – A combination of three readings demonstrates the varying interpretations of the importance of Antietam then challenges the reader to shift the focus from the course of the battle and its ramifications to the suffering of the individuals and the way death was confronted.

April 4: War and Freedom – This final set of readings focus on the experience of the immediate emancipation of four million slaves. While few at the time imagine the institution of slavery being abolished as quickly as it was, the selections of the conversation don’t discredit the process and struggles of securing freedom and that the full significance of the war is still not complete today.      

 

Making Sense of the American Civil War is presented by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association.

 

The Tennessee program is presented by Humanities Tennessee, an organization created in 1973 that is dedicated to developing a sense of community through educational programs in the humanities across Tennessee. The series is part of Civil War, Civil Rights, Civil Discourse, a project of Humanities Tennessee that seeks to equip Tennesseans to think deeply about the context of social and political divisions from the Civil War to the present.

 

All discussions will be held in the Magazine Room of the Morristown-Hamblen Library from 6-8 p.m.  To register for the program, please stop by the Main Floor Circulation Desk for a form and a book pack containing the books discussed in the lecture series.  The program will be limited to 24 participants, due to the number of book packs available for check out.  For more information visit www.morristownhamblenlibrary.org

 

 

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