Speaker Highlight: Aaron Sheehan-Dean

Aaron Sheehan-Dean is the Fred C. Frey Professor of Southern Studies and chairman of the History Department at Louisiana State University. He teaches courses on nineteenth-century U.S. history, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and Southern History. He is the author of the award-winning The Calculus of Violence: How Americans Fought the Civil War, Why Confederates Fought: Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia, and most recently Reckoning with Rebellion: War and Sovereignty in the Nineteenth Century.

Connecting themselves to the Royalists, who defended Charles I, Southerners embraced a world of hierarchy and order; while Northerners, especially New Englanders, took pride in carrying on the original Puritan legacy in their efforts to build a new Jerusalem. This talk will explore how historical memory provided a foundation for both white Southerners and Northerners to craft sectional identities, resulting in division and, eventually, Civil War.