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| John Neff organized a workshop to show teachers how to learn more about the Civil War from monuments like the Tennessee Monument at Shiloh, left. Photo courtesy of National Park Service. |
There is nothing wrong with using a textbook to teach about the Civil War. But if you have access to Civil War landmarks and memorials, why not use them as well?
The use of monuments and landmarks as a teaching resource was the theme of a unique workshop hosted on campus last summer. History professors and instructors from community colleges in 23 states participated in the workshop, which was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of its Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops program.
In addition to classroom discussions, participants visited Shiloh National Military Park near Corinth and Hillcrest Cemetery in Holly Springs to expand their firsthand experiences with these monuments.
“The focus [of the workshop] was to understand how historians use the memory of an event to help tell us about it,” said John Neff, UM associate professor of history and organizer of the workshop.
“We can study the Civil War by studying the way people remembered the war only a few years after it ended,” added Thomas Brown, associate professor of history and associate director of the Institute for Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina and workshop presenter.