The Female Gaze: Women Diarists and Chroniclers of the American Civil War

Workshop C: seminar room P105 (2nd floor, Philosophicum)

Hans-Jürgen Grabbe, Julia Nitz (Halle-Wittenberg)

 

1. Stefan L. Brandt (Wien), "'Boy, that was fun!' Female Agency and the Performance of Gender in Loreta Janeta Velazquez' Civil War Memoirs The Woman in Battle (1876)"

2. Antje Dallmann (HU Berlin), "'[G]oing to be a Florence Nightingale': The Romance of Nursing in Diaries by Confederate Women (Ada W. Bacot and Kate Cumming)"

3. Julia Nitz (Halle-Wittenberg), "The Quest for 'Citizenship': Southern Women's (Personal) Narratives of the American Civil War, 1861–1920"

4. Kirsten Twelbeck (Hannover), "Writing Solidarity: Esther Hill Hawks and the Symbolic Economy of her Civil War Diary"

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Contact:

Priv.-Doz. Dr. Stefan L. Brandt, Gastprofessor
stefan.brandt@univie.ac.at

Dr. Antje Dallmann
antje.dallmann@staff.hu-berlin.de

Kirsten Twelbeck, Ph.D.
kirsten.twelbeck@engsem.uni-hannover.de

Dr. Julia Nitz
julia.nitz@amerikanistik.uni-halle.de

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Daniel Aaron, in The Unwritten War (1973), looking at authors of the Civil War period – mainly white males such as Whitman, Twain, and Melville – comes to the conclusion that the Civil War remains surprisingly "unwritten." Elizabeth Young, in Disarming the Nation (1999), states that in her opinion, the Civil War is less unwritten than unread. She especially points out the many, so far neglected, contributions by women on the topic (2). Ever since, many scholars have looked more closely at women writers of the Civil War period (e.g., Elizabeth Keckley and Louisa May Alcott) and at women authors dealing with the Civil War and its repercussions in American society (e.g., Kate Chopin and Margaret Mitchell). Furthermore, a large amount of Civil War diaries by women has been unearthed, edited, and (re)published in recent years. However, apart from some famous examples, such as Mary Chesnut's Diary (publ. 1905), little work has been invested in examining the prolific autobiographical writings of women during the war. With the workshop we set out to inquire into the different forms of (private) female writing in the war years. We welcome papers pertaining to the following issues:

1. forms of autobiographical "writing" during the Civil War, i.e. diaries, letters, memoirs, paintings, etc., and their different functions;
2. methodological problems in dealing with life-writing genres and media (such as diaries published and edited with a "postwar perspective");
3. the "female" perspective on different aspects of the Civil War: politics, war strategy, issue of slavery, male and female spheres, survival, hygiene, ...;
4. case studies on writers from different regions and ethnic backgrounds;
5. comparisons of different perspectives on the grounds of region, ethnicity, social status, etc.; 
6. women’s contributions and subscriptions to 1860s periodicals.

The overall aim is to work towards a female perspective of the Civil War in order to gain a thorough insight into how women experienced the war and how they viewed and judged events and situations that were largely out of their control. The last 30 years have witnessed an increasing interest and an emphasis on the importance of the role of women during the American Civil War. Attention has primarily been centered on the work of women as nurses, doctors, soldiers, and spies. Furthermore, several studies have highlighted how the period was marked by women who challenged established gender concepts and tried to define new (public) roles for themselves. In other words, we know much about what women did and how they immersed themselves in fields traditionally reserved to men. But what is so far missing is extended research on the perspectives and personal as well as collective viewpoints of women during the war.