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American Social History Project • Center for Media and Learning

Like It’s Still Going On: A Civil War Sesquicentennial Reading and Discussion [part 1]

Published September 26, 2011

Frank Bidart, Wellesley College
Vijay Seshadri, Sarah Lawrence College
Kevin Young, Emory University
Sally Dawidoff (moderator), American Social History Project
The Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference
Washington, DC, February 5, 2011

In the first part of this two-part panel discussion, held at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, distinguished contemporary American writers Frank Bidart, Vijay Seshadri, and Kevin Young talk about writing about the Civil War 150 years after it began. Seshadri grew up an immigrant child of an immigrant father obsessed with the war; Young comes to the subject as a twenty-first-century African-American poet living in the South; and Bidart was spurred to write about Gettysburg by “the world created by the Bush administration.” Allen Tate and Robert Lowell’s seminal odes are also read and discussed. For all these writers, the war has become part of their Americanness.

Part 1: Introduction by Sally Dawidoff

Readings:

Part 2: Discussion

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