Lit Review Lite
As a prospective English teacher, I love my fair share of literature. I have my favorite novels and favorite genres, but part of me can’t shy away from history. I’ve always had an interest, mainly stemming from movies like Gladiator, Braveheart, and The Patriot. However, as I grew older, I began to see that history was much more than a few bloody battles. So much goes on behind the scenes that we can only know a fraction of it before we need to study the individuals.
For me, my search for behind the scenes moments in history came during my junior year of high school. For many, including myself, junior year is defined by AP US History and preparing for the exam. Thankfully, my year focusing on history was not just having my nose in books. I had a hands on experience when my junior class took a bus from Lansing, Michigan to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to see the famous battlefield. This put everything in perspective for me. I was able to see where Pickett’s Charge took place, saw the Eternal Light Peace Memorial, and finally understood the price that so many men had given, both Union and Confederate, to protect the ideals that they stood for. I began to take a new perspective on history that drew me to literature, specifically The Red Badge of Courage. I loved the idea of getting inside the mind of an individual who is in the midst of battle. The highs and lows that they go through are fascinating, and it is from this point that I draw my ALP and Lit Review Lite.
2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the Civil War; a turning point in American History. As I researched methods by which to teach the Civil War, I gained a great deal of perspective regarding how the history of the War has changed throughout the previous generations, especially during the 1980s, during which, Civil War studies and research saw a great revival. This was due, in large part, to multimedia presentations of the war, such as the film Glory and Ken Burns’ documentary from PBS.
Reginald Stuart speaks to this in his article “A Proud Heritage.” Stuart strongly urges the continued education and study of the Civil War and to think outside of commonly accepted points of view and perspectives (2011). I admit that when I first put together this project, I was very limited in the perspectives that I was thinking from. There is a complexity that goes beyond North and South, which Stuart urges people to consider. He says, ” The big headline — that the Civil War freed the slaves and ended the Southern rebellion — overshadowed many of the rich details about Black contributions. Even now, little is taught about the estimated 200,000 Black men (many of them runaway slaves) who suited up as Union soldiers. Federal records show that Blacks represented nearly 10 percent of the Union army by the time the war ended. Even less is said of the thousands of Black women who supported them.” (2011). Stuart raises two perspectives that I never considered when I thought of teaching Stephen Crane’s novel. There is a whole new realm of possibilities that can be engaged when more perspectives and points of views are opened up as options for students. While I was considering students writing either from the perspective of a Union or Confederate soldier, I know that adding more depth, such as a free African American soldier, a slave, or an African American woman can bring a new degree of discussion and thoughtfulness that simply focusing on the North and South cannot.
I found multiple other sources that highlighted the recent revival in studying the often forgotten participants in the war. Steven K. Johnson emphasizes the point that even when a point is suppressed, it still gains power to be remembered, and the Civil War is a prime example (2006). Even though history has often marginalized the role of African Americans and women in the war, they made immeasurable contributions that would not go away, and as recent years have shown, have been revived: “Certainly concerns about the role of freed slaves in post-war America are repressed, held subject to the symbolic mastery of the historical trauma—a mastery that advocates an aggressive white male as the ideal subject of power. More interesting might be to consider how post-Civil War short stories are optimal for such burials, and how such repressed memories uncannily haunt the narratives in spite of their intentioned forgetting” (2006). Opening up the door for students to write creatively about something that they care about, such as African Americans in the war, will garner more original and creative writing as well as varying perspectives. Johnson and Stuart both gave valuable insight into the importance of the inclusion of African Americans in Civil War lessons, and, after reading this article, I found other writers who continued to help me revise my outline for the ALP.
Alyssa Clapp-Intyre focused on the presentation of young people in Civil War literature. She takes a point of view similar to that of Marc Aronson, highlighting the difficulty for an adult to write from the perspective of a young person, especially one who lived 150 years before them (2006). Although she highlights its difficulty, she does emphasize that having new perspectives, specifically that of young girls during the Civil War, offers new possibilities for interpretation and understanding.
This was one of my main motivations for my project. As I attempted to answer the question “How can you use nonfiction alongside fiction to help students understand the complexity of a period of history?” I overlooked perspectives that could help students answer this question. While the Civil War website that I am using has a great deal of facts and information, taking these and varying the perspectives that they apply to can take them and give a greater understanding of the Civil War period than limiting response, as I was before.
I even found a lesson plan that went about addressing The Red Badge of Courage in a unique way that has help me to revise my proposal. I had been set in focusing on one way of teaching it and one way of responding to it. However, there are numerous ways, such as looking at Stephen Crane’s poetry and considering his writing as more general war literature than solely a representation of the Civil War (Soderquist, 2002). While I am not going to focus on either of those in my lesson, it did change my outlook on the response my students would give. I think that there are many forms in which a student can respond, and providing them an open slate to make that decision will enable them to respond creatively in the way they feel most comfortable.
This process will be reinforce with a response in the RAFT format. The student will be able to choose the role that they take, along with the audience they are writing to (Vandervanter, 2007). This is where more creativity can come in. The student may write to there family, giving a more intimate and emotional response, or they may make a political address, which would take a more opinionated tone. The format can vary as well, as I would encourage students to use a model that they are comfortable with, whether it be a narrative, poem, or spee ch, among other possibilities. And while the topic is fixed on being a response to the Civil War, there are a variety of perspectives that can be taken and a variety of ways the fiction and nonfiction texts can be coupled together.
As I continued to find articles, I found more and more on emphasizing the importance of educating people and not forgetting such an important time period in the history of our country. In the article “For the New Millenium, New Perspectives on the Civil War,” I found that there is a focus on breaking the stigmas of the war and challenging what people think in order to teach them a full scale view of what happened: “The [Civil War] Center strives to help all American citizens, young and old, North and South, avoid missing the war by urging them to imagine fresh perspectives that will enable them to make the war that most profoundly shaped the American character an integral part of our own individual identities today” (Madden, 1997). I believe that this completely embodies my question and what I am seeking to do with my ALP. Despite the ups and downs that surround it, the Civil War is still a part of our nation’s history and needs to be emphasized in such a way. To gain understanding of the Civil War is to better understand not only that time period, but also how our country became what it is today.
There is so much value that can be gained, and I continued to find myself being challenge by what I read. For example, “The once obvious truth of the Civil War does not imply that every soldier had slavery on his mind as he marched and fought. Many Southerners fought and died in gray never having owned a slave and never intending to own one. Thousands died in blue with no intention to set one free. But it was slavery that had broken one nation in two and fated its people to fight over whether it would be put back together again. The true story is not a tale of heroes on one side and villains on the other. Few true stories are. But it is a clear and straightforward story, and so is the tale of how that story became so complicated” ( Von Drehle, 2011). Statements like that make me realize that there are so many layers to the Civil War and that it would take a lifetime to peel them all back. However, I hope that my ALP will challenge students to look under there initial reaction and try and look at other perspectives, thus gaining a greater understanding of the Civil War and the people who were affected by it, whether they be Union or Confederate, slave or free, man or woman.
matthewahayes 
Matt, have you seen what Wilson Library at UNC has done to commemorate the 150th anniversery? I new original document highlighted for four years. Also there was a good interview on NPR the other day about Durham’s role in the war, including the largest troop surrender.
http://www.facebook.com/civilwardaybyday
You know, if we, you in Michigan and I in North Carolina,had been fortunate to have the kind of history teachers who could peel back some of those layers to help us understand the Civil War/War Between the States — then we might not have some of those unfortunate misunderstandings that color the North/South relationships even today.
I am so impressed by how you’ve written of your own transformation through your research. How we watch ourselves change always makes for a compelling narrative.
Elegant use of RAFT! Who would have thought that you’d come up with so many possible perspectives or settings?