C-SPAN’s BookTV did a short interview with me about my book as part of their C-SPAN Cities Tour of Fredericksburg that appears this weekend.
Considering that the book came out four years ago now, I’m glad I remembered as much as I did about it. The interviewer from C-SPAN, Christy Hinton, did a nice job framing the parts of my office that were clean and the nice cover of my book in the background. More importantly, she edited my responses down to a reasonable summary of what the book is about.
I’ve been fortunate lately to have a number of things come out recently featuring my teaching and research.
1) In October my US History in Film class was recorded by C-SPAN’s American History TV as we discussed the 1939 movie Gone with the Wind. It was a wide-ranging discussion of the movie as a flawed secondary source about the Antebellum, Civil War, Reconstruction eras in the South, as well as its role as a primary source for the 1930s perspectives on that past.
I did an introduction and conclusion, but the bulk of the class was the students delving deeply into the interpretations, implications, and lessons of the film. They did a terrific job.
[I’ve gotten a number of nice responses from people who watched it, but the best was from an 87-year old Holocaust survivor who wrote me that GWTW had been her first exposure to American History. She then told me that she was inspired to learn about the actual historical background of the time.]
You can watch the whole class here.
2) A couple weeks later, I did a talk for the Fredericksburg Area Museum on the Coming of the Battle of Fredericksburg as part of the celebration C-SPAN came to that as well and you can see that talk here.
3) A few weeks after that, I was the moderator for a great series of talks about the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Fredericksburg by George Rable, Susannah Ural, and Frank O’Reilly. They put up with my unorthodox introductions and gave great talks which can be found here.
4) Finally, UMW did a nice profile of me and my teaching for the main page of the website. It’s overly generous, but I appreciate it just the same.
My interview on the public radio show With Good Reason is up. Host Sarah McConnell and Associate Producer Kelley Libby did a great job helping me to talk about my book and the experiences of Confederate veterans after the Civil War.
Be sure to check out the Companion Feature at the bottom as well.
