Sunday Scholar Series: The Civil War and the American Spirit

How the Civil War Transformed American Literature

Professor Fuller discusses how literature helped spark the Civil War and how the aftermath of the Civil war changed that literature. In particular, Walt Whitman, America’s Poet, exemplifies the ways writers began to focus less on ideal and more on peoples day-to-day lives.

Randall Fuller is Department Chairperson and Chapman Professor of English at the University of Tulsa. He is the author of From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed American Literature (Oxford University Press, 2010) and Emerson’s Ghosts: Literature, Politics, and the Making of Americanists (Oxford University Press, 2007).