American Discord with Megan Bever and Laura Mammina
Greetings all! I am very pleased to welcome Drs. Megan L. Bever and Laura Mammina to the show - they are the co-editors, along with Lesley J. Gordon, of American Discord: The Republic and Its People in the Civil War Era. Let me just say right out of the gate that I really loved this book. It’s a collection of 15 essays in honor of the esteemed historian George C. Rable, which cover a number of issues ranging from social, political, military, environmental, and memory studies. Anyone interested in the Civil War Era history, broadly defined, will get plenty to think about with this volume. I’m looking forward to introducing many of these essays in my own classes…and I strongly encourage my teacher colleagues out there to do the same.
Megan L. Bever is associate professor of history at Missouri Southern State University. She has also published articles in the Journal of Southern History, Civil War History, and the Journal of Sport History and co-edited The Historian behind the History: Conversations with Southern Historians (University of Alabama Press, 2014). She is currently at work on a book-length project exploring the role of alcohol in the Civil War.
Laura Mammina is an assistant professor of history at the University of Houston-Victoria where she researches and teaches on nineteenth-century U.S. racial and gender history. She took her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Alabama. Her work has appeared in several places, most recently an article entitled ““In the Midst of Fire and Blood”: Union Soldiers, Unionist Women, Military Policy, and Intimate Space during the American Civil War” published in the July 2018 issue of Civil War History. She is currently working on a book manuscript examining interactions between Union soldiers and southern women during the American Civil War.
I especially enjoyed going over the “process,” as it were, involved in compiling a collection such as this…we discuss:
George C. Rable and his life’s work…which by the way, it pretty freakin’ extraordinary
The editorial process and wrangling more than a dozen historians - a challenging task :)
The logic behind organization
How we might use these essay in a classroom setting: the particular to the general
Differences and similarities among the American body politic, and the notion of inevitability
Our favorite essays
Social media
Memory studies and the future of Confederate monuments
Clearly, that’s a lot - and I am sure you will find the discussion as riveting as I did. Be sure to follow Megan and Laura on Twitter and get the book! We can talk more in the comments and on the Interwebs. 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.
One more thing…for those of you who would like to become more familiar with the work of George C. Rable, here’s a starter kit:
Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!
Damn Yankees! Demonization and Defiance in the Confederate South
Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism
But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction
God’s Almost Chosen People: A Religious History of the American Civil War
With compliments,
Keith