OUR APRIL MEETING HAS BEEN CANCELLED
DUE TO THE COVID-19 MEETING RESTRICTIONS

Myths and Meanings of the Civil War - presented by Randall Miller

In an illustrated lecture on “Myths and Meanings of the Civil War” Dr. Randall Miller, Professor of History at Saint Joseph’s University and author of many works on the Civil War era, will discuss how the experience of the war shaped ideas of America as “a nation” not just a Union, affected the way people remembered the war in memorials and monuments, and expanded the scope of what it meant to be a democracy and who belonged as a citizen.

Randall M. Miller is the William Dirk Warren `50 Sesquicentennial Chair and Professor of History at Saint Joseph’s University. He is the author or editor of numerous books, which treat such various topics as African-American culture and life, slavery, religion, social reform, popular culture, politics, regional cultures (especially the American South and the Mid-Atlantic), colonial life, the American Revolution, Civil War and Reconstruction, urban affairs, mass media, and ethnic and immigrant history. Among these, he probably is best known for his award-winning book, “Dear Master”: Letters of a Slave Family (Cornell University Press; rev. & enlarged ed., University of Georgia Press). He also co-edited the award-winning Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery (Greenwood Press; rev. & enl. ed., Praeger). Selected recent books include (as co-editor) Religion and the American Civil War (Oxford University Press), and The Birth of the Grand Old Party: The Republicans’ First Generation (University of Pennsylvania Press); (as editor) Lincoln & Leadership: Military, Political, and Religious Decision Making (Fordham University Press); and (as co-author) Unto a Good Land: A History of the American People (Eerdmans), and The Northern Home Front during the Civil War (Praeger). Dr. Miller has been a consultant for, and appeared in, documentaries on American culture and history, the Civil War, politics, religion, African-American culture and life, slavery, Philadelphia life and politics, and other topics, which have aired on national cable and public broadcast channels and regional and local television and are used in schools across the country. Dr. Miller also has appeared frequently on national and local radio and television to comment on American culture, history, and politics.