| John Brown's Body: Slavery, Violence, and the Culture of War Contributor(s): Nudelman, Franny (Author) |
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ISBN: 080785557X ISBN-13: 9780807855577 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press OUR PRICE: $40.38 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: September 2004 Annotation: Nudelman examines the symbolism and reality of dead bodies in the Civil War era as they were used in song, poetry, fiction, political writing, and visual images to declare national unity and rebirth between the North and the South. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | United States - Civil War Period (1850-1877) - Social Science | Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - Social Science | Death & Dying |
| Dewey: 973.71 |
| LCCN: 2003027753 |
| Series: Cultural Studies of the United States |
| Physical Information: 0.63" H x 6.14" W x 9.24" (0.78 lbs) 240 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 1851-1899 - Ethnic Orientation - African American - Topical - Civil War - Topical - Death/Dying |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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. |
Contributor Bio(s): Nudelman, Franny: - Franny Nudelman is associate professor of English at Carleton University in Ottawa. |