Civil War 150 Lecture Series Begins Sept. 3 on Hattiesburg Campus

University Libraries at the University of Southern Mississippi will sponsor the first of five talks relating to the American Civil War on Tuesday, Sept. 3 from 6-7 p.m. at the Cook Library Art Gallery on the Hattiesburg campus. The lecture series is free and open to the public.

The opening lecture of the Civil War 150 Lecture Series, This Murderous Storm: Soldiers and Families in America's Civil War, by Susannah Ural, focuses on the average Civil War soldier who saw the war from the “worm's eye view.” Ural's talk, which is tied to her forthcoming book, Don't Hurry Me Down to Hades: The Civil War in the Words of Those Who Lived It, will provide attendees with a better sense of ordinary men and their families in the Civil War era.

Ural is an associate professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi and a Senior Fellow in Southern Miss's Center for the Study of War & Society. She specializes in the U.S. Civil War era and is the author of several books including the forthcoming Don't Hurry Me Down to Hades: The Civil War in the Words of Those Who Lived It. Ural is hard at work finishing her fourth book, Hood's Boys: John Bell Hood's Texas Brigade and the American Civil War.

The series focuses on different aspects of the Civil War including the life of the average soldier, African American writer and reformer Harriet Jacobs, food in the Civil War, singing and fiddling by soldiers, and slave insurrections in Mississippi. The talks are made possible by a grant from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, The Library of America and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Each presentation is from 6-7 p.m. and will be held in the Cook Library Art Gallery, located on the right at the entrance to the library. Admission is free. The lecture schedule follows:

Sept. 3 - Susannah Ural, “This Murderous Storm':  Soldiers and Families in America's Civil War.”

Sept. 9 - Sherita Johnson, “Is This Freedom?: Harriet Jacobs and Black Contraband in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War.”

Sept. 16 - Max Grivno, “Rumors of War:  Slave Insurrections in Civil War Mississippi.”

Sept. 23 - Andrew Haley, “The Bitter Taste of Defeat:  Food and the Civil War.”

Oct. 1 - Christopher Goertzen and Bill Rogers, “Soldiers Singing and Fiddling During the Civil War.”

For more information about the lecture series, contact Jennifer Brannock at jennifer.brannockFREEMississippi or 601.266.4347.