Memorial Poems
Civil War Literature in Context

Although Walt Whitman famously claimed that “the real war will never get into the books,” the American Civil War did in fact call forth a vast range of literary responses, in genres as diverse as poetry, popular song, novels and other prose genres.  How does this literature depict the war, and how does it grapple with Whitman’s claim that there is something unrepresentable about the war’s carnage?  In Fall, 2008, we explored these questions in an upper-level seminar, English 71: The Civil War in Literature (Professor Colleen Boggs), which fulfilled the “culminating experience” requirement in the English major.  Students explored primary texts in the classroom and beyond: each student developed a research project that contextualized the literature we had studied by drawing on primary materials from special collections and the college archives.  The work of three students -- Virginia Deaton, Nicole LaBombard, and David Schmidt -- is displayed here; it represents their original research.

You may download a small, 8x10 version of the poster: MemorialPoems (2.4 MB)

The exhibition was created and installed by Virginia Deaton, Nicole LaBombard, and David Schmidt and will be on display in the Class of 1965 Galleries in Rauner Special Collections Library through March 31, 2009.

• Recent Exhibitions
• Collection Highlights
• Adventures in Collecting by Philip Cronenwett