W&M Charlottesville-Highland - An Evening with Professor Gary Gallagher
Join W&M Charlottesville-Highlands alumni, parents, family and friends to hear from Professor Gary Gallagher! Professor Gary Gallagher's presentation, titled "The Civil War and Its Memory: Understanding the Great American Crisis in 2023," will examine how people in the United States have understood, and misunderstood, the Civil War. He will address the need to differentiate between history and memory by exploring the different ways in which the generation that experienced the war explained and described the conflict. He also will highlight the current tendency among Americans to shun historical complexity and to embrace a simplistic version of the past featuring one-dimensional heroes and villains.
Professor Gallagher's talk will be followed by a wine and cheese reception. Please register by March 1.
Gary W. Gallagher is the John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War Emeritus at the University of Virginia. He taught at Penn State University for twelve years before joining the faculty of the University of Virginia in 1998. He is the author or editor of more than forty books, including "Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know About the Civil War" (2008), "The Union War" (2011), and "The Enduring Civil War: Reflections on the Great American Crisis" (2020). Professor Gallagher has participated in more than five dozen television projects in the field of Civil War history. He was the recipient of the Cavaliers’ Distinguished Teaching Professorship for 2010-2012 (the highest teaching award conveyed by the University of Virginia) and the Philip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni in 2013. Active in the field of historic preservation, he was the first president of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites, twice served as a member of the Board of the Civil War Trust and has given testimony about preservation before Congressional committees on several occasions.
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