From the first shots of the war itself to recent debates about Neonazis and Confederate monuments, the history of the Civil War in the United States has played a major role in thinking about racism and democracy. The anti-racist side of Civil War memory has, however, too often attached itself to US state-building projects, projects of nation, empire, and of liberal citizenship. In his lecture, Andrew Zimmermann will discuss his current book project on the American Civil War as transnational working-class revolution, emphasizing questions of race, class, violence, and social transformation. Zimmerman is the author of Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany (Chicago, 2001) and Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South (Princeton, 2010).
New York City, NY; NYC