Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in African American Studies
Episode: Deborah Willis, "The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship" (NYU Press, 2025)
Description: A stunning collection of stoic portraits and intimate ephemera from the lives of Black Civil War soldiers
Though both the Union and Confederate armies excluded African American men from their initial calls to arms, many of the men who eventually served were black. Simultaneously, photography culture blossomed--marking the Civil War as the first conflict to be extensively documented through photographs. In The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship (NYU Press, 2025), Deb Willis explores the crucial role of photography in (re)telling and shaping African American narratives of the Civil War, pulling from a...