The American Civil War: A Ghost Story

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How does the past persist? How does it haunt us, making us who we are? What is it like to visit the sites of violence, the places of despair, and to find in them a source of contemplation, of perspective, and ultimately of a deepened faith in what is possible; to become, in short, a graver, deeper person? Considering the poetry, photography, and painting of the American Civil War--thinking of the work of Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Emily Dickinson, Abraham Lincoln, and many others--this course explores an urgent question: what is our ethical relation to the American past?