Bridges Academy: The Real Civil War, Imagined

Location

Degheri Alumni Center

Free

“The real war,” writes Walt Whitman in Specimen Days, “will never get in the books.” Where then, is the real war to be found? How and where do we read and look for “the untold and unwritten history of the war—infinitely greater . . . than the few scraps and distortions that are ever told or written?” In this presentation, we shall consider some “scraps and distortions” of literary and visual culture, attending to the painting and the photography as well as the literature of the Civil War. We shall be particularly interested in the diverse resistances of the “real war” to literary and visual representation, for it is important not only to understand the catastrophe of 1861-65, but to think about the ways in which we are asked to understand it—the ways in which these “scraps” or fragments of war are made meaningful.

For ages 55 and up.

Visit www.sandiego.edu/bridges for more information. Registration is required.