Living by Inches with Evan Kutzler

Greetings all! At long last, I finally get a chance to talk to Evan Kutzler about his new book, Living by Inches: The Smells, Sounds, Tastes, and Feeling of Captivity in Civil War Prisons - which…not incidentally, I just reviewed right HERE on this website (hint: I liked it). Evan is an assistant professor of history at Georgia Southwestern State University where he teaches U.S history, public history, the Civil War era, and undergraduate research seminars. He is also the co-editor (with Timothy Williams) of Prison Pens: Gender, Memory, and Imprisonment in the Writings of Mollie Scollay and Wash Nelson, which I reviewed HERE.

As you can see we have a lot in common - this of you who read my first book Across the Bloody Chasm, will most certainly remember my take on the memory of the Civil War POW experience as part of the atrocities narrative. Anyway…Evan takes things a lot further than I ever did by closely analyzing the lived experiences of captivity. Take a listen…we discuss:

• How ones finds themselves drawn to the study of Civil War prisons

• Regimental histories as reliable sources

• Diaries and letters as reliable sources

• Limitations to recording the lived experience while in captivity

• How does all of this help us understand the life of a POW?

• The lasting effects of the prison experience

• The “Dark Turn” in veteran studies

You can find Evan on Twitter, naturally - so stop by and shoot him a note :) And…buy his new book! We can keep the conversation going! AND…don’t forget to subscribe to The Rogue Historian Podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite app so you never ever ever ever miss a show. That would be dumb.