John Brown's Body - Slavery, Violence, and the Culture of War (Paperback, New edition)

Singing ""John Brown's Body"" as they marched to war, Union soldiers sought to steel themselves in the face of impending death. As the bodies of these soldiers accumulated in the wake of battle, writers, artists, and politicians extolled their deaths as a means to national unity and rebirth. Many scholars have followed suit, and the Civil War is often remembered as an inaugural moment in the development of national identity. Revisiting the culture of the Civil War, Franny Nudelman analyzes the idealization of mass death and explores alternative ways of depicting the violence of war. Considering martyred soldiers in relation to suffering slaves, she argues that responses to wartime death cannot be fully understood without attention to the brutality directed against African Americans during the antebellum era. Throughout, Nudelman focuses not only on representations of the dead but also on practical methods for handling, studying, and commemorating corpses. She narrates heated conflicts over the political significance of the dead: whether in the anatomy classroom or the Army Medical Museum, at the military scaffold or the national cemetery, the corpse was prized as a source of authority. Integrating the study of death, oppression, and war, John Brown's Body makes an important contribution to a growing body of scholarship that meditates on the relationship between violence and culture.

General

Imprint:	The University of North Carolina Press
Country of origin:	United States
Series:	Cultural Studies of the United States
Release date:	September 2004
First published:	September 2004
Authors:	Franny Nudelman
Dimensions:	235 x 156 x 16mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	240
Edition:	New edition
ISBN-13:	978-0-8078-5557-7
Categories:	Books > Humanities > History > World history > 1750 to 1900 Books > Humanities > History > American history > General Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Anthropology > Social & cultural anthropology > General Books > History > American history > General Books > History > World history > 1750 to 1900 Promotions
LSN:	0-8078-5557-X
Barcode:	9780807855577

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