University of Mary Washington Associate Professor and Chair of History and American Studies Jeffrey McClurken will discuss how Confederate veteran families adjusted to life in the postwar South during an interview on the “With Good Reason” public radio program beginning Saturday, August 20.
The interview can be heard on August 20 at 4:30 p.m. on WCVE 88.9 FM and on Monday, August 22 at 12:30 a.m. on WAMU 88.5 FM. The segment, “Confederate Outlaw,” is expected to be available online beginning the week of the show at http://withgoodreasonradio.org/2011/08/confederate-outlaw.
McClurken’s recent book “Take Care of the Living: Reconstructing Confederate Veteran Families in Virginia” explores the ways that coming to terms with postwar reality involved changes that influenced the shape of Southern society for generations. He researched Confederate veterans, their families and postwar experiences in Southside Virginia for the community-based study. McClurken presented his findings at the Virginia Historical Society’s Banner Lecture Series and the Virginia Festival of the Book. According to The Journal of Southern History, the book “is an original contribution to the historiography of the Civil War era and of the South’s early forays into government programs for the disabled and economically disadvantaged.”
An instructor of the courses “Remembering the American Civil War” and “When Americans Came Marching Home: The Veteran in U.S. History,” McClurken helps students examine the impact of war and the role veterans play in politics and society. He also teaches courses in American families, gender, technology and digital history.
McClurken received a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor’s degree in history from Mary Washington. His research involving 19th-century American social and cultural history and digital history has been widely published. The recipient of the Mary Washington Young Alumnus Award in 2003, McClurken has served as a National Endowment for the Humanities proposal reviewer as well as UMW’s representative to the Fredericksburg-Stafford Civil War Sesquicentennial Planning Commission. He is a member of the American Historical Association, the Society of Civil War Historians, EDUCAUSE, the Southern Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians.
“With Good Reason” is the only statewide public radio program in Virginia. It hosts scholars from Virginia’s public universities who discuss the latest in research, pressing social issues and the curious and whimsical. “With Good Reason” is produced for the Virginia Higher Education Broadcasting Consortium by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and is broadcast in partnership with public radio stations in Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Ho does your research address the corollary that perhaps the most important adjustment that these Southern families had to make was how to relate to the the newly “emancipated” former slaves, and that part of the immediate steps included efforts to undermine reconstruction gains and the consequent unleashing of so called “black codes?”