Dear Workshop,

On Thursday, November 17, John Howell, Ph.D. Candidate in Religion and Literature will present a chapter from his dissertation:

“The Hole in the Middle: Civil War Literature and Civil War History”

Time: 12:00, Thursday, November 17, 2011
Place: Swift Hall, Room 200
Food: Snacks provided, feel free to bring your lunch!
Paper: Copies of the essay are available by emailing changp@uchicago.edu.

John writes: In [this paper], I draw analogy between the moods of the Civil War-concerned fictions of various late-nineteenth century authors (for which Henry James’s The Bostonians is a synthetic exemplar in this chapter) and the tenor of a recent wave of American religious historical scholarship on the American Civil War in an effort to convoke a contrarian strand of Civil War memory.

The chapter eventually explicates the use of the concept of an American civil religion within this so-called wave in order to gesture toward a clarification and reconstruction of the concept.

Best,

– Paul Chang

Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please contact Paul Chang in advance at changp@uchicago.edu.