The Civil War from Nat Turner to Birth of a Nation

This interdisciplinary course reframes traditional understandings of the Civil War in three ways. First, by showing that civil conflict in the United States began well before 1861 and ended well after 1865, taking the form of slave uprisings and Klan terrorism, as well as conventional war. Second, by showing that the former Confederacy won this longer Civil War by establishing a new order of black freedom. And third, by placing the war in the context of international politics and trade. Readings range from fiction, film, letters, and speeches to poetry, pamphlets, prints, photographs, songs, and history. The recorded lectures are from the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences course United States in the World 34. (4 credits)