A schedule packed with rigorous, engaging learning opportunities and site visits

The workshop schedule has been carefully planned to provide NEH Summer Scholars with an immersive and challenging intellectual experience but also with opportunities to explore Gettysburg. Readings and activities outlined below are subject to change, and slight alterations to the schedule may be necessary as conditions unfold.

Over the course of the week, workshop participants will visit key historic sites, including Cemetery Hill, Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, the “High Water Mark” and site of Pickett’s Charge, The Angle, the borough of Gettysburg, and the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. Each day, these site visits will be paired with seminar sessions and workshop reading discussions designed to highlight various Civil War narratives and aspects of the Gettysburg story—thus creating a holistic experience that encourages participants to think critically about history, storytelling, and memory.

Detailed and updated versions of the workshop schedule can be viewed in multiple ways. Be sure to bookmark, print, or otherwise save the version that works best for you. Here’s how to view the schedule:

• On the project wiki site, which is where updates will appear first.

• As a downloadable PDF document. Because there is another step involved in exporting information from the wiki to a PDF document there may be slight differences in the PDF version of the schedule; please consult the wiki link above for the most up-to-the-minute version.

• You can also view the schedule piece-by-piece by visiting the Events page on this website. From there you can add specific events to your Google or Apple calendar to make sure you know when every event is happening.

• Finally, of course, you can keep scrolling. While specific days and times are not listed here, you can see exactly what we’ll be up to during each session.

Sunday Orientation & Keynote Reception

After checking in on Sunday afternoon, workshop participants will attend a keynote event welcoming them to Gettysburg and orienting them to the week’s activities. This event will be held at the Gettysburg Museum & Visitor’s Center and participants will have full access to the museum’s exhibits during this time, including Philippoteaux’s Cyclorama painting, resources describing the battle and Gettysburg’s place in our collective memory, and a screening of A New Birth of Freedom, a film that places the monumental events of the battle in the larger context of American history. Opening remarks will be delivered by Dr. Powell, the project director, and by workshop faculty member Dr. Carol Reardon, the George Winfree Professor of American History Emerita at Penn State University.

Readings: Prior to the workshop participants will receive electronic access to workshop reading assignments which include excerpts from primary and secondary literature to be discussed throughout the week to assist in the creation of teaching projects. Reading assignments listed below are subject to change; participants will receive final reading lists for each day’s activities after participation has been confirmed.

Central question(s) to be engaged: What is the significance of Gettysburg, both as an historic site and as a site of collective memory? What can visitors hope to learn by coming here?

MONDAY “In this crisis his laws of life were useless”: The experience of combat in the Civil War

Monday’s sessions will be led by Dr. Ian A. Isherwood, Associate Professor of War & Memory Studies at Gettysburg College. Dr. Isherwood’s morning session will focus on the experience of nineteenth century warfare and how Americans at the time conceptualized war. The overarching goal of the session will be to place the battle that occurred here—and, by extension, the larger Civil War itself—in context by discussing the wars that came immediately before and after this one and the changing character of war as it was fought over the course of the nineteenth century. Dr. Isherwood will place particular emphasis on the experience of soldiers who fought at Gettysburg, speaking especially to the way emerging technologies and evolving tactics affected the way the war was experienced in the ground and exploring the repercussions of the war as it resonated in the lives of survivors long after it ended.

Following a break for lunch, Dr. Isherwood will lead participants onto the battlefield itself, where they will extend discussion of the themes raised in the morning seminar at sites such as Barlow’s Knoll and Oak Ridge. While in the field, Dr. Isherwood will also orient participants to the events of the battle’s first day. The afternoon session will culminate in a visit to the Seminary Ridge Museum. There, participants will have the opportunity to view significant artifacts and discuss implementation of the museum’s curricular offerings with education coordinator Peter Miele. They will also be able to stand in the Cupola above the museum—the same vantage point General John Buford stood in on the morning of July 1, 1863 as the battle began to unfold. Following dinner, participants will meet with Dr. Dave Powell, the project director, for an orientation to the teaching project.

Readings: “The Face of Battle at Gettysburg,” by Scott Hartwig (from Battle: The Nature and Consequences of Civil War Combat, edited by Kent Gramm, 2008); “The Infantry Firefight,” by Paddy Griffith (from Battle Tactics of the Civil War, 1987); and “Courage at its Core,” by Gerald Linderman (from Embattled Courage, 1987).

Central question(s) to be engaged: How did 19th century Americans conceptualize violence? How did Civil War soldiers fight and why did they fight this way? What lessons can we take from the stories of heroism and suffering that follow war to encourage peaceful resolution of conflict?

TUESDAY “IN GREAT DEEDS, SOMETHING ABIDES; ON GREAT FIELDS, SOMETHING STAYS”: RENDEZVOUS AT GETTYSBURG

Tuesday’s activities will begin to center on the battle itself and on the events preceding it, focusing on the fateful decisions that ultimately helped make the battle of Gettysburg one of the most consequential events in U.S. history. In the morning session, Dr. Tim Orr, Associate Professor of History at Old Dominion University, will lead a seminar that recaps the events of the battle’s first day before beginning a more intensive exploration of the events of the next two days of battle. Dr. Orr will highlight Confederate General Richard Ewell’s choice not to pursue the scattered Union troops desperately attempting to obtain high ground at Cemetery Hill—a fateful decision that contributed mightily to General Lee’s great gamble of July 3, 1863, when he ordered Pickett’s Charge.

At the end of the morning session participants will join Gettysburg College’s Director of Special Collections, Carolyn Sautter, in the Special Collections and Archives at the College’s Musselman Library. Throughout the week, participants will have access to the library during free time to continue perusing the Civil War Era Collection’s primary sources and other related materials as they complete their teaching projects. Sautter will be joined in a split session by Dr. Sarah Kate Gillespie, an art historian and expert on Civil War-era art and photography who is currently serving as Interim Director of the Schmucker Art Gallery, who will guide participants through an exhibition of Ciivil War era art and material artifacts on display at the Schmucker gallery. The exhibit will raise key questions related to the production of visual artifacts during the war, encouraging participants to consider how and why photographs of soldiers were made; why decisions, such as when and how to pose the bodies of soldiers killed in battle, were made by photographers; how the public received and made sense of such images; and how the public’s encounters with these images shaped their impressions of the war.

Following a break for lunch, participants will reconvene for another seminar led by Dr. Orr. His afternoon seminar will focus on key events that occurred on the battle’s second day, including Longstreet’s attack on the Union left and vicious fighting at historic sites such as Culp’s Hill, the Wheatfield, and along Plum Run between Devil’s Den and Little Round Top (in “the Valley of Death,” or the “Slaughter Pen”). Key to this discussion will be the critical Union defense of its left flank at Little Round Top, which was secured by one of the most storied actions of the whole Civil War: the bayonet charge of the 20th Maine led by Colonel Joshua Chamberlain. At the dedication of a monument to the 20th Maine at Gettysburg in 1889, Chamberlain said “In great deeds something abides; on great fields something stays,” commemorating the bravery of his regiment while, at the same time, giving voice to the heroism of all who fought at Gettysburg. The afternoon site led by Dr. Orr will lead participants to Culp’s Hill; after dinner, Dr. Orr will lead an evening site visit to Little Round Top. This site visit enables participants to appreciate the beauty of the battlefield as a preserved site of cultural and historical memory while also reflecting on the horrors that took place here.

Readings: Reading assignments for this day include selections from D. Scott Hartwig, former supervisory historian for the Gettysburg National Military Park, historian Jennifer M. Murray, and Anthony M. Nicastro, a Licensed Battlefield Guide, as well as reading assignments selected by Dr. Gillespie that focus on photography of the Civil War era.

Central question(s) to be engaged: What is the significance of individual acts of heroism such as those initiated by Chamberlain and his men on Little Round Top? How was such heroism acknowledged and remembered in the war’s aftermath, when many veterans were still living, and how is it commemorated now? How should fictional accounts of the battle’s events, such as The Killer Angels and the film Gettysburg, be used by teachers of this history?

WEDNESDAY “UP, MEN! AND TO YOUR POSTS!”: pickett’s charge and the forces of history & memory

Attempting to stir his men to action, Confederate General George Pickett is said to have roused them with these words: “Up, men! And to your posts! And don’t forget today that you are from Old Virginia!” Gen. Pickett was joined by Gens. Johnston Pettigrew and Isaac Trimble in his infamous assault, but Pickett’s Charge—a signature moment of this battle, if not of the entire war—bears only his name. A long, thin Confederate line eventually reached a copse of trees inside “The Angle,” the focal point of Pickett’s Charge that has been immortalized as the “High Water Mark of the Confederacy” or the place of deepest penetration into the Union position. Wednesday’s sessions will focus on the fateful decisions that led to Pickett’s failed charge— decisions that, along with Ulysses Grant’s coincident siege of Vicksburg, helped turn the tide of the war definitively in the Union’s favor and caused Robert E. Lee to offer his resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The day will begin with a visit to key battlefield sites (led by Dr. Carol Reardon, formerly the George Winfree Professor of American History at Penn State University and currently Adjunct Professor of Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College, and author of Pickett’s Charge in History and Memory), including the launch site of Pickett’s Charge, The Angle, and the so-called High Water Mark.

After a break for lunch, Dr. Reardon will lead a seminar focused on how Pickett’s Charge was “shaped by the forces of history and memory,” as she has put it, during and after the war. On Wednesday evening, participants will have time to engage in reflection and to work with colleagues on the development of their teaching projects.

Readings: Participants will be asked to read Chapter One of Reardon’s book, Pickett’s Charge in History and Memory, “Disconnected Threads.” In this chapter, Reardon discusses how “fragments of memory” emerge from events (such as the battle of Gettysburg) that involved many people, and how these fragments create, in the words of historian C. Vann Woodward, a “twilight zone between living history and written history” that is a “breeding ground for mythology.” As one of the most mythologized events in U.S. history, Pickett’s Charge itself will offer participants fertile ground for exploring how the potent interaction of history, memory, and mythology help create ways of remembering what actually happened in the past.

Central question(s) to be engaged: How and why is Pickett’s Charge remembered? How did this famously doomed assault contribute to the “Lost Cause” mythology that framed memories of the Confederacy in the decades after its collapse, and how did supporters of the Union cause remember it as they advanced their own perceptions of what happened at Gettysburg? How have your own perceptions of what happened here changed after participating in the week’s activities?

THURSDAY “Too much for human endurance”: measuring the cost of human suffering at gettysburg

Interestingly, the person perhaps most associated with Gettysburg is someone who never fought here: Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln has an avenue, a school, a highway, and even a diner named for him in Gettysburg, and the speech he delivered here is rightly remembered as one of the greatest delivered in any language. Each year, first-year students at Gettysburg College walk through town to the National Cemetery to hear a visiting dignitary deliver this Address. As part of this “First-Year Walk,” Lincoln’s words are delivered anew to an eager audience of Gettysburg’s newest residents—his words again suspended in the air, awaiting action.

On this day we have two excursions planned for workshop participants, each led by Dr. Carol Reardon and Dr. Tim Orr. The first will begin at the George Spangler Farm, which served as a field hospital for five weeks after the battle and where as many as 1,900 soldiers from both armies received medical treatment. The farm site, restored to its nineteenth-century appearance and operated by the Gettysburg Foundation, offers an outstanding opportunity to examine in detail the various medical, social, and military challenges of handling an unexpected mass-casualty event. The experiences of George and Elizabeth Spangler and their four children who remained on the farm through the ordeal offer a window into the civilian experience after the battle, while the physicians’ case notes provide insight into the state of medical care available to patients suffering from traumatic injuries of all sorts, and the soldiers stories, and those of their families, speak volumes as well. In short, the reality of the aftermath of battle comes together in exceptionally powerful ways on this seemingly peaceful property.

The second site visit will occur after lunch at the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, where Dr. Reardon and Dr. Orr will again encourage reflection and conversation about the human cost of war. Because formal presentations are forbidden within the confines of the cemetery by the National Park Service, Drs. Reardon and Orr will speak to participants from a spot across the street before releasing participants to walk through the cemetery on their own.

After dinner, participants will join a seminar session led by Dr. Jill Ogline Titus, Acting Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. Dr. Titus’ seminar is focused not on Gettysburg at the time of the battle but a hundred years later. In 1963, amid intense Cold War turmoil and the escalating struggle for black freedom, the United States also engaged in a nationwide commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Civil War with commemorative events centered on Gettysburg. In this seminar, Dr. Titus will use centennial events staged at Gettysburg to help participants explore the history of political, social, and community change in 1960s America and show how the era’s deep divisions thrust Gettysburg into the national spotlight as white and black Americans came to define the meaning of the battle, the address, and the war in dramatically different ways.

Readings: Participants will read various primary source materials selected by Dr. Reardon to highlight the day’s site visits as well as a selectin by Dr. Titus centered on the memorials that went up in Gettysburg during the Civil Rights and Cold War eras.

Central question(s) to be engaged: Is it possible to measure the cost of the human suffering that occurred at Gettysburg? How did Lincoln’s words provide a salve for a beleaguered country worn down by three years of war? How did his words valorize and give meaning to the sacrifice made by so many here?

FRIDAY GETTYSBURG IN HISTORY & MEMORY

Friday’s sessions will focus on how the events at Gettysburg have been commemorated over time, with special emphasis placed on the way African Americans have attempted to connect to the events that happened in Gettysburg and the meaning ascribed to them. The morning session, “Black Pennsylvanians’ Memory of the Gettysburg Campaign,” will be led by Dr. Hilary N. Green, the James B. Duke Professor of Africana Studies at Davidson College. From USCT recruitment to presidential campaign songwriting, Dr. Green’s seminar will explore how the African American community of Franklin County, located in south central Pennsylvania, used the memory of the Gettysburg campaign in a variety of ways over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her seminar will showcase the specific experiences of Joseph R. Winters, Priscilla Marshall, Thomas L. White, and Edna Christian Knapper to enable understanding of how Gettysburg’s “hallowed ground” and its memory affected diverse communities at the Pennsylvania–Maryland border

In the afternoon, Dr. McKinley Melton, Associate Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Rhodes College, will offer a workshop inviting participants to examine ways that history, memory, and imagination serve as complement and complication in the work of Black writers. They will first explore how prominent writers— novelist and theorist Toni Morrison, poet Frank X Walker, and poet and novelist Melvin Dixon—have articulated the importance of memory in shaping their creative work, not only with respect to how they engage the past, but also with respect to how they judge and assess its ongoing significance in the present. With these ideas as a frame for discussion, the group will consider illustrative examples—from James Baldwin, Ernest Gaines, and/or selected poetry—that draw parallels between key moments from the Civil War era and the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th Century. Bridging bridging the day’s discussion with the lessons that they’ve learned during their week-long seminar (supplemented by primary and secondary sources that highlight the African American historical presence in Gettysburg during and after the battle), participants will be asked to consider how they might develop lesson plans, classroom exercises, or assignments that invite students to consider the history, memory, and imagination in Black creative expression, with a focus on place broadly and Gettysburg specifically.

The Friday sessions will be followed by time for participants to work on their teaching projects and an evening seminar session led by Dr. Powell, whose scholarly work is focused on curricular development, history education, teaching for and about democracy, and helping teachers develop “pedagogical content knowledge,” a term coined by Lee Shulman of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to describe the specialized knowledge of effective professional teachers. Dr. Powell’s seminar will allow participants to discuss how focusing on Gettysburg in their classrooms can provide students with a fuller sense of the American experiment in self-government, its meaning, and the importance of preserving historic resources to ensure that our cultural and historical memories do not fade.

Readings: Melvin Dixon, “The Black Writer’s Use of Memory” (pp. 18-27), from History & Memory in African-American Culture; Frank X Walker, “Memory, Research, Imagination, and the Mining of Historical Poetry” (pp. 406-409), from Furious Flower: The Future of African American Poetry; Toni Morrison, “The Site of Memory” (pp. 233-245), from The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations; James Baldwin – “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the 100th Anniversary of the Emancipation”; Ernest Gaines, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman “The War Years”

Central question(s) to be engaged: How and why is Gettysburg been remembered by successive generations of visitors and scholars, and how is it remembered around the world? How do people interpret the significance of what happened here? What do prevailing interpretations of the meaning of Gettysburg say about how we view ourselves as a people and our responsibilities as citizens? What should students take away from their study of Gettysburg?

SATURDAY TEACHING PROJECT DISCUSSION & CONCLUSIONS

On the final morning of the workshop, we have reserved time for participants to discuss and present their teaching projects to the group.