Reading Confederate Monuments

By Maria SegerNarrated by Mason Jackson

Length9h 33m

About this audiobook

Contributions by Danielle Christmas, Joanna Davis-McElligatt, Garrett Bridger Gilmore, Spencer R. Herrera, Cassandra Jackson, Stacie McCormick, Maria Seger, Randi Lynn Tanglen, Brook Thomas, Michael C. Weisenburg, and Lisa Woolfork Reading Confederate Monuments addresses the urgent and vital need for scholars, educators, and the general public to be able to read and interpret the literal and cultural Confederate monuments pervading life in the contemporary United States. The literary and cultural studies scholars featured in this collection engage many different archives and methods, demonstrating how to read literal Confederate monuments as texts and in the context of the assortment of literatures that produced and celebrated them. They further explore how to read the literary texts advancing and contesting Confederate ideology in the US cultural imaginary—then and now—as monuments in and of themselves. On top of that, the essays published here lay bare the cultural and pedagogical work of Confederate monuments and counter-monuments—divulging how and what they teach their readers as communal and yet contested narratives—thereby showing why the persistence of Confederate monuments matters greatly to local and national notions of racial justice and belonging. In doing so, this collection illustrates what critics of US literature and culture can offer to ongoing scholarly and public discussions about Confederate monuments and memory. Brought to audio through new AI narrative technology, Reading Confederate Monuments teaches us that even as we remove, relocate, and recontextualize the physical symbols of the Confederacy dotting the US landscape, the complicated histories, cultural products, and pedagogies of Confederate ideology remain embedded in the national consciousness. To disrupt and potentially dismantle these enduring narratives alongside the statues themselves, we must be able to recognize, analyze, and resist them in US life. The pieces in this collection position us to think deeply about how and why we should continue that work.

Audiobook details

GenreHistory, Literary Classics

Length9 hrs 33 mins

Narrated byMason Jackson

FormatAudiobook

Publish dateNov 15, 2022

LanguageEnglish

1Opening Credits

9Chapter 7: Performing Counter-Monumentality of the Civil War in Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard and Suzan-Lori Parks's Father Comes Home from the Wars: Parts 1, 2, and 3

2Introduction: How and Why to Read Confederate Monuments

10Chapter 8: Rewriting the Landscape: Black Communities and the Confederate Monuments They Inherited

3Chapter 1: Complicating Today's Myth of the Myth of the Lost Cause: The Calhoun Monument, Reconstruction, and Reconciliation

11Chapter 9: Battle of the Billboards: White Supremacy and Memorial Culture in #Charlottesville

4Chapter 2: Print Culture and the Enduring Legacy of Confederate War Monuments

12Chapter 10: Teaching Confederate Monuments as American Literature

5Chapter 3: South by Southwest: Confederate and Conquistador Memorials Crossing/Closing Borders

13Conclusion: Challenging Monumentality, Channeling Counter-Monumentality

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6Chapter 4: Weaponizing Silent Sam: Heritage Politics and The Third Revolution

14Afterword

7Chapter 5: "Wasting the Past": Albion Tourgée, Confederate Memory, and the Politics of Context