Let’s Talk About It: Making Sense of the American Civil War

PT Library to host Let’s Talk About It: Making Sense of the American Civil War reading and discussion series – a 150^th Anniversary Commemoration

Peters Township Public Library will host a five-part reading and discussion series which will focus on making sense of the American Civil War. The library is one of more than 150 sites throughout the country that will host the reading and discussion series, a 2012 project of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association. Additional support in Pennsylvania is provided by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council. 

Peters Township Public Library is one of four Pennsylvania libraries chosen to partner with Pennsylvania Humanities Council. Readings selected for the program will provide a glimpse of the vast sweep and profound breadth of Americans’ war among and against themselves, and include: 

• March by Geraldine Brooks
• Crossroads of  Freedom: Antietam by James McPherson
• America’s Wars: Talking about the Civil War and Emancipation of Their 150^th Anniversaries, a forthcoming anthology of historical fiction, speeches, diaries, memoirs, biography, and short stories, edited by national project scholar Edward L. Ayers. 

Program books are provided to participants through funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Library Association and through the Pennsylvania Humanities Council for Peters Township Public Library participants.

Dr. Elaine Parsons, Civil War scholar and Associate Professor of History at Duquesne University, will lead all five discussion sessions. Dr. Parsons received her PhD at Johns Hopkins University.  Her work focuses on social movements and popular culture in the nineteenth-century United States, with a focus on the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. She is currently completing a book about the Ku Klux Klan, entitled “Constructing the Kuklux: The Ku Klux Klan and the Modernization of the Reconstruction-Era South.” Dr. Parsons is the recipient of a Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellowship for the study of violence in culture.

Registration for this program requires a commitment to attend the discussions on each of the following Sundays from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Peters Township Public Library: Feb. 26, March 25, April 29, May 20, and June 24. This program is limited to 25 persons with valid Peters Township Public Library cards. Registration forms available at the Reference Desk on the second floor of the library and must be completed in person by the participant. For additional information about this program, please contact Pier Lee, Library Director, or a reference staff member at 724-941-9430.