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Interdisciplinary Studies of the Civil War Era: Recent Trends and Future Prospects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2016

MICHAEL E. WOODS
MICHAEL E. WOODS*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Marshall University. Email: woodsm@marshall.edu.
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Abstract

Interdisciplinary scholarship on the era of the American Civil War has invigorated a well-trodden field. This essay addresses recent scholarship on the history of emotions, medicine, and the environment in the Civil War era, analyzing key themes and suggesting areas for future research. Together, these fields have added nuance to the “dark turn” in Civil War studies, historicized concepts often treated ahistorically, and allowed Civil War historians to engage in meaningful conversations with scholars in other fields and disciplines.

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Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , May 2017 , pp. 349 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2016 

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References

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75 On this distinction see Brady, “From Battlefield to Fertile Ground,” 315. J. R. McNeill adds political environmental history as a third category, but it has not deeply influenced Civil War studies. McNeill, “Observations,” 6–9.

76 Fiege, Mark, “Gettysburg and the Organic Nature of the American Civil War,” in Tucker, Richard P. and Russell, Edmund, eds., Natural Enemy, Natural Ally: Toward an Environmental History of Warfare (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2004), 93–109 Google Scholar, 93, 104.

77 Brady, Lisa M., “The Wilderness of War: Nature and Strategy in the American Civil War,” Environmental History , 10, 3 (July 2005), 421–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brady, , “Devouring the Land: Sherman's 1864–65 Campaigns,” in Closmann, Charles E., ed., War and the Environment: Military Destruction in the Modern Age (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2009), 49–67 Google Scholar; Brady, , War upon the Land: Military Strategy and the Transformation of Southern Landscapes during the American Civil War (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Brady, “Nature as Friction: Integrating Clausewitz into Environmental Histories of the Civil War,” in Drake, Blue, the Gray, and the Green, 144–62.

78 Brady, War upon the Land, 23.

79 Megan Kate Nelson, “‘The Difficulties and Seductions of the Desert’: Landscapes of War in 1861 New Mexico,” in Drake, Blue, the Gray, and the Green, 34–51; Nelson, “Death in the Distance: Confederate Manifest Destiny and the Campaign for New Mexico, 1861–1862,” in Arenson, Adam and Graybill, Andrew R., eds., Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 33–52 Google Scholar.

80 Stith, Matthew M., “‘The Deplorable Condition of the Country’: Nature, Society, and War on the Trans-Mississippi Frontier,” Civil War History , 58, 3 (Sept. 2012), 322–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Amy Murrell Taylor, “How a Cold Snap in Kentucky Led to Freedom for Thousands: An Environmental Story of Emancipation,” in Berry, Weirding the War, 191–214.

82 John C. Inscoe, “‘The Strength of the Hills’: Representations of Appalachian Wilderness as Civil War Refuge,” in Drake, Blue, the Gray, and the Green, 113–43.

83 Aaron Sachs, “Stumps in the Wilderness,” in Drake, Blue, the Gray, and the Green, 96–112.

84 Nelson, Ruin Nation.

85 Timothy Johnson, “Reconstructing the Soil: Emancipation and the Roots of Chemical-Dependent Agriculture in America,” in Drake, Blue, the Gray, and the Green, 191–208.

86 Drake, James D., “A Divide to Heal the Union: The Creation of the Continental Divide,” Pacific Historical Review , 84, 4 (Nov. 2015), 409–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 447.

87 Stewart, Mart A., “What Nature Suffers to Groe”: Life, Labor, and Landscape on the Georgia Coast, 1680–1920 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

88 Nelson, Megan Kate, Trembling Earth: A Cultural History of the Okefenokee Swamp (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

89 Meier, Kathryn Shively, Nature's Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013)Google Scholar, 2.

90 Whitman, Specimen Days, 80.