Graduation Term

Fall 2025

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Department of History

Committee Chair

Amy Wood

Committee Member

Stewart Winger

Committee Member

Alan Lessoff

Abstract

This thesis examines film depictions of the American Civil War in the early 1910s. In this time period, around three hundred films about the Civil War were released by American film companies. My thesis studies the cultural themes in these films and public response to them in order to understand why so many were made in such a short period of time. This thesis is primarily concerned with the field of Civil War memory. The field itself arose in the mid-twentieth century as historians were attempting to reconcile the continued disenfranchisement of African-Americans with the abolition of slavery at the end of the Civil War. Broadly speaking, scholars of Civil War memory contend that a period of national reconciliation occurred after the end of the war, which manifested as a cultural and political push, leading to a lenient restoration of the Union and a maintaining of the status quo in the postwar South. An important feature of the field is that this message of national reconciliation was pushed primarily though popular culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and so scholars in the field tend to focus on studying those popular culture artifacts. However, few scholars have paid attention to film and Civil War memory. This thesis fills that gap in the historiography. Through analyzing a sample of these films, and examining reports and advertisements of these films, this thesis studies the broad themes and tropes that appear across film remembrances of the Civil War.

Access Type

Thesis-Open Access

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