7 Comments

I would love to go to CWI however I will be in the Mohawk Valley at a Revolutionary War conference.

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I just had a chance to listen to your interview with Pete Carmichael. I loved it. It was a great discussion by both of you. I know Pete from many years ago before he came to Gettysburg. He was a regular on various battlefield tours. I always enjoyed his insights.

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Hi Terrance,

Glad to hear you enjoyed the interview. I am looking forward to catching up with Pete in June at the CWI as well as working with him to lead one of the battlefield tours.

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Great discussion in this video. It is very interesting how current events impact the work of historians and can put them at risk for their work. I took the online course with Prof. Carmichael on Forever Scholars which was recommended here. He taught the class how to interpret primary sources which I had never experienced as an amateur historian. Thanks for this!!!

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Hi Steve,

Glad to hear that you enjoyed the interview. I always enjoy talking with Pete. His passion for this history is infectious. If you enjoyed the Forever Scholars video you may want to check out his new series, which he hosted with Carolina Janney at Wondrium.

https://www.wondrium.com/the-great-tours-civil-war-battlefields

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Watched the video. Numerous interesting issues. Issues of site interpretation and relevance to local population are important. My experience, limited though it is an an archaeologist, is consistent with what the two of you were talking about. Sometimes why you think a site is important is not why the people linked to the site see it as is important. At that point whose story do you tell, and adding the layer that comes with working for a government agency charged with managing the site and trying to tell the story so it reaches a broad audience reaches the point where it makes my head hurt

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Glad to hear you enjoyed the interview. The local population is absolutely relevant. Historian Jill Titus does a great job of providing just this context in her analysis of the Confederate monuments dedicated at Gettysburg during the civil rights era.

https://uncpress.org/book/9781469665344/gettysburg-1963/

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