...The Civil War was not only fought in battlefields, but also in the daily lives of southerners at home. Victoria Ott’s study in Confederate Daughters: Coming of Age in the Civil War examines the unique demographic of young women coming of age during the time of the war. The sources for her study come from young women born between 1843 and 1849 to wealthy secession supporting families in the south. The study is chronologically organized and seeks to understand how the young women’s gender and upbringing tied their generation together and shaped support for the Civil war, even after it ended. The late antebellum is the first period examined, specifically young women’s lives before the war. Education is emphasized as the means by which women...
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...Malcolm DuBose Dr. Paul A. Cimbala Seminar:Civil War Soldiers Essay 3 The extent of political ideology as a motivational factor for soldiers in the American Civil War was so great that it changed the historical narrative of the war for veterans and future southerners. In his semi-biographical book, The Making of a Confederate, Williams L. Barney uses the life of an elite Western North Carolina planter named Walter Lenoir, and his descent into the Lost Cause ideology. Barney presents Lenoir as a comparatively liberal man of the time. Educated at his home states university, prior to the attack on Fort Sumner he planned to move to Minnesota, a fairly young state that was actively recruiting Americans from other states and Europeans to solidify population dominance over the inhabitant native tribes. Barney characterizes the Lost Cause phenomenon as an attachment to the faded glory of a romanticized Confederate past. Using Williams L. Barney as a model of the Confederate soldier, his choice of subject varies from the popular trend of studying the poor southern confederate soldiers and his motivations. Lenoir, an elite southern planter was the quintessential model of who would most benefit from a victorious south. Though southern identity contains it fare share of myriad ambiguities, Barney presents a semi-biographical analysis that precisely dissects the often-proclaimed complexity of the Lost Cause narrative. With intention, Barney shows that the preservation of slavery...
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...students and historians on the topic of the Vietnam War. Each chapter brings a new area, which needs to be addressed about how to remember the war from the viewpoint of the women. She states, “had to face up to met own ignorance of Vietnam’s postwar circumstance, to figure out why women warriors, so essential to Vietnam’s long history… have remained invisible to most Americans,” (page 6). Overall, this book is a great read to open the eyes of the reader to an untold story of hardships and struggles. While, Turner is respectful to the culture of Vietnams people, it is hard to fully understand the importance of this topic. Yes, it is important to understand a forget history of gender during warfare. But, the way she sets out to write her book is hard to follow at some points in the book. Through out her book, it felt as if she was trying to do too much in a short amount of pages. Turner has great oral stories for the reader to learn about, but it felt as if it was rushed. The...
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...black identity, and a strong faith and religion. Even though the words can be separated in the end they all come back together. There were many narratives written by fugitive slaves before the Civil War and by former slaves in the postbellum era. These narratives document slave life from the perspective of first-hand experience. The stories they tell are dark and ugly. The authors like Douglas and Jacobs reveal the struggles, sorrows, aspirations, and triumphs of slaves in absorbingly personal story-telling. Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was the first autobiography by a formerly enslaved African American woman. In it she describes her experience of the sexual exploitation that made slavery especially oppressive for black women. She also recounts her life in slavery in the context of family relationships with her escape and her struggle to free her children. Fredrick Douglas who wrote Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglas, an American Slave, Written by Himself depicts the grim life of slavery as well. He vividly describes the brutality that slaves endured, the meager rations they are allowed for nourishment, and even the murder of a slave. He also hits on the common practice of slave owners raping the enslaved women. Douglas also writes of his escape from slavery and fleeing north. This brutal harsh life was reality for a slave. Inequality of...
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...was a powerful pioneer in civil rights and a powerful leader who faced many struggles of prejudices because she was a colored woman. Because she had lived a difficult life in the capital of the US, she decided it was time the world knew of her the many trajectories she continued to face along with many other African Americans. On October 10, 1906, Terrell gave a speech titled, “ What it Mean to be Colored in the Capitol of the U.S.,” to the members of the United Woman’s club in Washington, D.C. This speech was very influential and significant speech that served as a voice for other African Americans who had no voice. This speech also was a time for Terrell to explain the unnecessary hassles she and other blacks had to take on when trying to live as a citizen in the capital. Through this speech we can see an abundance of prejudice that taint the lives of African Americans in the U.S.. In the following paragraphs, I will establish the notability of this speech, analyze the historical context that sparked the discourse into existence and explore other rhetorical features that will establish my analysis’s significance. Mary Church Terrell embodies feminine style rhetoric in her argument to address the social, economic and political struggles placed against African Americans with the undertone of constitutive rhetoric, topical structure, pathos and logos to validate her point. History: Mary Church Terrell was born during the civil war on September 23,1863 to...
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...HEIKE HÄRTING N HIS REVIEW of Anil’s Ghost, Todd Hoffmann describes Michael Ondaatje’s novel as a “mystery of identity” (449). Similarly, Aritha van Herk identifies “fear, unpredictability, secrecy, [and] loss” (44) as the central features of the novel and its female protagonist. Anil’s Ghost, van Herk argues, presents its readers with a “motiveless world” of terror in which “no identity is reliable, no theory waterproof” (45). Ondaatje’s novel tells the story of Anil Tessera, a Sri Lankan expatriate and forensic anthropologist working for a UN-affiliated human rights organization. Haunted by a strong sense of personal and cultural dislocation, Anil takes up an assignment in Sri Lanka, where she teams up with a local archeologist, Sarath Diyasena, to uncover evidence of the Sri Lankan government’s violations of human rights during the country’s period of acute civil war. Yet, by the end of the novel, Anil has lost the evidence that could have indicted the government and is forced to leave the country, carrying with her a feeling of guilt for her unwitting complicity in Sarath’s death. On one hand, Anil certainly embodies an ethical (albeit rather schematic) critique of the failure of global justice. On the other, her character stages diaspora, in Vijay Mishra terms, as the “normative” and “ exemplary … condition of late modernity” (“Diasporic” 441) — a condition usually associated with the figure of the nomad rather than the diasporic subject — and thus raises questions about...
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...history, and indeed it is obliged to do so.”1 The social and political revolutions of 1960s have made fulfilling such a responsibility less daunting than ever. Invaluable references, including Darlene Clark Hine, ed. Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Evelyn Brooks Higgingbotham, ed., Harvard Guide to African American History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); Arvarh E. Strickland and Robert E. Weems, Jr., eds., The African American Experience: An Historiographical and Bibliographical Guide (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001); and Randall M. Miller and John David Smith, eds., Dictionary of Afro- American Slavery (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1988), provide informative narratives along with expansive bibliographies. General texts covering major historical events with attention to chronology include John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2000), considered a classic; along with Joe William Trotter, Jr., The African American 1  Experience (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001); and, Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold, The African American Odyssey (Upper Saddle River: Printice-Hall, Inc., 2000). Other general texts not to be overlooked are Colin A. Palmer’s Passageways: An Interpretive History of Black America Vol. I: 1619-1863 and Vol. II (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998)...
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...United States is, because of the experiences and traditions that have taught it attitudes sharply at variance with some of the standard American beliefs: ● The sense of failure, which comes from being the only group of Americans who have known military defeat, military occupation, and seemingly unconquerable poverty; ● The sense of guilt, which comes from having been a part of America’s classic symbol of injustice, the enslavement and then the segregation of the Negro; and ● The sense of frustration, which comes from the consistent inadequacy of the means at hand to wrestle with the problems to be faced, whether they be poverty, racial intolerance, or the preservation of an historical past rich in tradition. In the years after the Civil War, the Southerner attempted to deny these things by the simple, but ultimately ineffectual, process of ignoring them. The Southern local colour writers concentrated on the quaint, the eccentric, and the remote; and the creators of the “plantation tradition” idealised the past. Against this sentimental view the first two voices that were strongly raised were those of Ellen Glasgow and James Branch Cabell, Virginians who in their differing ways defined the patterns which 20th-century Southern fiction was to take when it became serious and fell into the hands of that group of writers of talent who have practised it in that century. In other words, when this group of talented young writers in the 1920’s and 30’s addressed themselves to...
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...One’s view of poetry is extremely personal. With over fifty-five different formal styles of poetry to choose from (Kennedy & Gioia 681-717) no two individual’s tastes will coincide, the same can be said for poets. No one will argue that Walt Whitman and Herman Melville have vastly different techniques for chronicling the events they experienced. This is especially true for the author’s interpretations of events leading up to, throughout, and after the American Civil War. Although they approached their subject from the same vantage point, that of the Union or Northern Army, both author’s writing styles could not be more different. Melville and Whitman’s family history, personal experiences, professional interactions and literary notoriety all factor into their chosen poetic style and content. The following is a critical analysis of these similarities and differences using select works from Melville’s Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The list of recommended poems is not sufficient to adequately fulfill this requirement. For thoroughness, additional poems...
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...Washington’s commanding presence and oratory deeply moved his contemporaries. His writings continue to influence readers today. Although Washington claimed his autobiography was “a simple, straightforward story, with no attempt at embellishment,” readers for nearly a century have found it richly rewarding. Today, Up From Slavery appeals to a wide audience from early adolescence through adulthood. More important, however, is the inspiration his story of hard work and positive goals gives to all readers. His life is an example providing hope to all. The complexity and contradictions of his life make his autobiography intellectually intriguing for advanced readers. To some he was known as the Sage of Tuskegee or the Black Moses. One of his prominent biographers, Louis R. Harlan, called him the “Wizard of the Tuskegee Machine.” Others acknowledged him to be a complicated person and public figure. Students of American social and political history have come to see that Washington lived a double life. Publicly he appeased the white establishment by remaining cautious in his charges and demands. Privately he worked tirelessly to undo the effects of institutional and cultural racism. Although he seemed to have made a grand compromise, first with the white south and then with white America, he worked in deepest secret to undermine the compromise and advance the social and economic position of blacks. No doubt exists as to his greatness....
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...Mariam and Laila, who become caught up in the repression and misogyny of conservative Islamic culture. Events span the decades from the rule of Afghan kings, the Soviet invasion, the civil war of the Mujahideen warlords, the takeover of the Taliban and the eventual liberation by Allied forces. It gives compelling details about the tragic struggles and sacrifices of the two principal characters as they try to survive through anarchy and extremism in what would become a brutalizing culture. I have read the writer, Khaled Hosseini’s last book, The Kite Runner before. I'll try steer away from comparing the two books here. They're both very good reads and worth your time. But I will say that I consider A Thousand Splendid Suns to be the better of the two. The author's narrative style is stronger and less predictable and he stretches himself, very effectively, to look at the events of the last 35 years in Afghanistan from a woman's point of view. Hosseini does an excellent job of referencing the global and regional political issues in the story without making them a main plot point. The large events are a backdrop, a scene setting device that serves as a canvass for the personal tribulations the main characters endure. In doing this, he avoids being overtly preachy and opinionated. The result is a narrative that keeps its focus on the subjects of the story, while exposing the reader to the cultural and moral pitfalls of Afghanistan during this time frame and, more generally, of any...
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...providing a depth of understanding of the event; it is, however, the permeating legacy of the Indian national congress that has been routinely identified as a political organisation synonymous with the departure of empire and colonialism. The remit of this essay focuses our attention upon the development and narrative of the Indian National Congress, and the use of its political structure in exercising and mobilising nationalist sentiments throughout the Asian subcontinent. Although instrumental and inherently central to the discussion of Indian independence, one must retain an open and wider view of the multitude of pressures, from within and without, that ultimately led to British withdrawal. It would be prudent therefore to accommodate the international economic and political circumstances that restricted the manoeuvrability of the British following the Second World War, and its noticeable influence upon the retreat of imperialism, upon the wider discussion of the end of British rule. Although providing the structure of national identity, the degree to which the congress had a direct impact upon the redirection of imperial policy is subject to speculation. The narrative of the Congress developing into an organisation, during the interwar period, that directed a mass nationalist movement is nevertheless fundamental to the discussion of the end of imperialism in India. Despite the inherent structural weaknesses of British control over the subcontinent, the role of the Congress...
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...The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction, written by Edward Ayers does not deal predominantly with one overall thesis. Instead Ayers writes in a narrative tone and depicts the story of how the south began to grow after the Civil War through Reconstruction. He uses a very optimistic tone when discussing the growth and movement of the south, never really taking a side when it comes to topics such as segregation or the movement towards a more industrialized nation. He uses personal stories and quotes from people of the time period to show the hard times and events that people had to endure during the end of the 19th century going into the 20th. Ayers touches on subjects such as the rise in industrialization, segregation and the political turmoil that in turn shape the new south. Ayers focuses on the time period from about 1877 to 1910. He begins by talking about the railroads and how they are the driving force behind the growing south. Along with rough working conditions they brought glamour and new technology to fuel the south. Stores and towns began to sprout up and the south began to become more mechanized and farms were beginning to be abandoned. After the war, railroads gave blacks an opportunity to leave plantations and find work all over the southwest. Political turmoil and corruption also affected the south early on. Segregation set in and the Democratic Party had a hold on the south. Black men were persuaded with money or violence in many cases to make...
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...century and illustrate these characteristics using the texts studied in class. Okay let’s start with William Butler Yeats, who was not only the main figure in the Irish literary renaissance but also the twentieth century’s greatest poet in the English language. Yeats constantly uses allusive imagery and large symbolic structures. Yeats adopted a cyclical model of history which he created a private mythology that allowed him to come to terms with both cultural and personal pain. This model also helped explain the symptoms of the Western civilization’s declining spiral; the plight of contemporary Irish society and the chaos of European culture around World War 1. Yeats shares with writers like Rilke and T. S. Eliot the quest for larger meaning in a time of trouble and the use of symbolic language to give verbal form to that quest. For many years it is Yeats’s mastery of images that defines his work. From his early use of symbols as private keys, or dramatic metaphors for complex personal emotions, to the immense cosmology of his last work, he continued to create a highly visual poetry whose power derives from the dramatic interweaving of specific images. One of his poems called When You Are Old pleads his love for the beautiful actress and Irish nationalist Maud Gonne, whom he met in 1889 and who repeatedly refused to marry him. From the love poems of his youth to his old age, when The Circus Animals’ Desertion describes her as prey to fanaticism...
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...Frederick Douglass was a slave in America until the age of 20. He wrote three of the most highly regarded autobiographies of the 19th century, while he only began learning to read and write when he turned 12 years old. After an early life of hardship and pain, Douglass escaped to the North to write three autobiographies, which spaced along decades. He wrote about his life as a slave and a freeman. The institution of slavery scarred him so intensely that he decided to devote his powers of speech and prose to fighting it. Douglass wrote three biographies about his life as a politician, slave, and abolitionist. However, the historical value of these works does not remain as important as the quality of the works themselves. Frederick Douglass’ writing deserves recognition in the canon of great American authors, because his work meets the chosen criteria for inclusion in a collection of important literature. Douglass influenced many famous abolitionists with his literary works, and this impact, coupled with his desire to write an expose about oppression in America, makes him a winning candidate. Although his published works, mostly autobiographies, received much acclaim from abolitionists, this paper explores the quality of Douglass’s work from a literary standpoint. To fully appreciate the impact of Douglass’s autobiographies, we must examine violent period in which he lived. Douglass, born in 1818, grew up as a slave on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation in eastern Maryland. At the time...
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