An AMERICAN EXPERIENCE Seminar

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE   classroom resources

Date: Thursday, Mar. 18, 2010 Time: 7:00 p.m.-8:30 p.m. (EST)

Reflecting on the Civil War in 1892, Walt Whitman concluded, "The real war will never get in the books." But Whitman did try to bring the real war into his poems. An anti-slavery Democrat, who dressed the wounds of both Northern and Southern soldiers, Whitman wrote poems that describe the circumstances of war—from the exuberant optimism of 1861 to the blood-soaked exhaustion of 1865. How did he interpret the slaughter and sacrifice of the Civil War? How can we bring students to the "the real war" through his poems? This seminar is a collaboration between the National Humanities Center and public television's historical documentary film series AMERICAN EXPERIENCE. Participants will view the AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film Walt Whitman and explore how to use it in the classroom.

LEADER:

Franny Nudelman Associate Professor of English Carleton University

• Assigned Readings
  1. Walt Whitman film on AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, PBS online.
  2. "Song of Myself" (PDF)
  3. Poem of Wonder at the Resurrection of the Wheat (PDF)
  4. Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (PDF)
  5. First O Songs for a Prelude (PDF)
  6. Cavalry Crossing a Ford (PDF)
  7. Come up from the Fields Father (PDF)
  8. Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night (PDF)
  9. A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest (PDF)
  10. The Wound Dresser (PDF)
  11. Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice (PDF)
  12. Look Down Fair Moon (PDF)
  13. Reconciliation (PDF)
  14. To a Certain Civilian (PDF)
  15. Drum-Taps, Synopsis (PDF)
  16. Contemporary Review 1 (PDF)
  17. Contemporary Review 2 (PDF)
  18. Contemporary Review 3 (PDF)
  19. Contemporary Review 4 (PDF)
  20. "Hospital Scenes and Persons" (PDF)
  21. "Some Specimen Cases" (PDF)
  22. "The Million Dead, Too, Summ'd Up" (PDF)
• Seminar Presentation (PowerPoint, 322KB)
• Seminar Evaluation
• Forum
• Seminar Recording
  1. Streaming recording
  2. Download recording (You will need to install the WebEx ARF player, available at download, to playback the recording.)