William Blair is professor of history at the Pennsylvania State University, where he is also director of the Richards Civil War Era Center and editor of Civil War History. He specializes in the social history of the Civil War, with special emphases on the home front and the politics of remembering the conflict. He is author of Virginia's Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861-1865 (1998), and Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865-1914 (2004). He also has coedited, with William Pencak, The Making and Remaking of Pennsylvania's Civil War (2001). He currently is working on a project that explores the meaning of treason during and after the Civil War.

Lecture topics:

• When Memorial Days Created Friction
• Pennsylvania’s Split Personality During the Civil War
• Why Didn't the Rebels Hang?
• The Many Meanings of Civil War Desertion
• Why It Was a Rich Man’s Fight: The Confederacy and Mobilization

Viewed Saturday, November 21, 2009