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Another Look: American Catholics And The Quest For Equality In The Civil War Era, Jason Duncan

Civil War Book Review

Robert Emmett Curran’s masterful treatment of American Catholicism in the Civil War era is the first comprehensive history of Roman Catholics in the North and South before, during, and after the war. Curran provides an in-depth look at how the momentous developments of these decades affected the entire Catholic community, including Black and indigenous Americans. He also explores the ways that Catholics contributed to the reshaping of a nation that was testing the fundamental proposition of equality set down by its founders. Ultimately, Curran concludes, the revolution that the war touched off remained unfinished, indeed was turned backward, in no …

The Civil War On The Water: Favorite Stories And Fresh Perspectives From The Historians At Emerging Civil War, Stacy Allen

Civil War Book Review

The Civil War on the Water continues the celebration of Emerging Civil War’s 10th anniversary with a compilation of favorite navy tales and obscure narratives by the group’s distinguished public historians. This eclectic collection of more than three dozen essays offers fresh accounts on unfamiliar topics as well as second looks at familiar battles, ships, leaders, and events. There is something here for everyone, neophyte and veteran reader alike.

Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story Of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running And The Slave Trade, Gerald Horne

Civil War Book Review

Historian Jonathan W. White tells the riveting story of Appleton Oaksmith, a swashbuckling sea captain whose life intersected with some of the most important moments, movements, and individuals of the mid-19th century, from the California Gold Rush, filibustering schemes in Nicaragua, Cuban liberation, and the Civil War and Reconstruction. Most importantly, the book depicts the extraordinary lengths the Lincoln Administration went to destroy the illegal trans-Atlantic slave trade. Using Oaksmith’s case as a lens, White takes readers into the murky underworld of New York City, where federal marshals plied the docks in lower Manhattan in search of evidence of slave …

Civil War Lagniappe, Kennon H. Keiser Jr.

Civil War Book Review

The American Civil War era is a rich tapestry of stories and individuals. Moments of inhumanity and human kindness abound. The Civil War Book Review has the great pleasure of presenting this complex tapestry to our readers for our summer 2024 issue. From borderland guerrillas, naval warfare, historical memory, and the search for equality, historians have no shortage of stories to investigate and contextualize. Each of the manuscripts reviewed in this publication takes us through various moments throughout this period, and some even take us to the period long before secession, as the African slave trade knit together the Atlantic …

Final Resting Places: Reflections On The Meaning Of Civil War Graves, Paul Ashdown

Civil War Book Review

In Final Resting Places, some of the most accomplished historians of our time reflect on the importance of the Confederate and Union cemeteries that eventually emerged and explore how monuments to the fallen have become cultural flashpoints in our struggle to come to terms with the war's root causes and legacy.

"Civil War Treasures", Hans Rasmussen

Civil War Book Review

To commemorate the recent sesquicentennial of Charles Sumner’s death, this installment of “Civil War Treasures” features transcriptions of four of his letters held in the LSU Libraries Special Collections. Although not the most detailed of missives, they all date from significant periods of his tenure in the Senate: the imbroglio over the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Sumner’s assault at the hands of Preston Brooks, and his evaluation of an ever-worsening situation during the secession crisis in the winter of 1861.

The Political Transformation Of David Tod: Governing Ohio During The Height Of The Civil War, Joseph Ricci

Civil War Book Review

While studies of President Abraham Lincoln, as well as his Confederate counterpart, Jefferson Davis, and their military generals have dominated Civil War literature, rarely has attention to the politics of the war extended beyond the executive office. Joseph Lambert Jr.’s The Political Transformation of David Tod examines an often-overlooked facet of the political history of the Civil War – the governorship of loyal states. Few historians have ventured into this aspect of the political history of the war.

Two Counties In Crisis: Measuring Political Change In Reconstruction Texas, Cameron Sauers

Civil War Book Review

Robert Dillard’s Two Counties in Crisis explores three decades of political culture in two divergent Texas counties. Collin County, a frontier county largely home to emigrants from other Southern states, is contrasted against Harrison County, a cotton growing county with 145 planters who each owned more than 20 enslaved peoples. Dillard claims that these counties, and Texas more broadly, did not neatly align with the political culture of the rest of the Confederacy. In a combination of political science and history, Dillard argues that a culture of backlash and resistance to federal authority defined Texas state politics in the Civil …

"To The Manor Born", Jacob N. Long

Civil War Book Review

Matthew Speiser’s To The Manor Born is bold, but bold by the attempt alone. Speiser’s history where the American Civil War never ends is a work of fiction whose high-water mark is its own synopsis. Of course, same as anything in the world of imagination, Speiser’s America could have conceivably existed.

Silent Cavalry: How Union Soldiers From Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta And Then Got Written Out Of History, David J. Gerleman

Civil War Book Review

In Silent Cavalry: How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta and Then Got Written Out of History, Howell Raines seeks to publicize the story of loyal Alabamians who fought for the Union. The First Alabama Cavalry is little known, he argues, due to early twentieth century collusion between unreconstructed Alabama officials and an influential cabal of Lost Cause scholars trained by William Dunning at Columbia University.

Soldier Of Destiny: Slavery, Secession, And The Redemption Of Ulysses S. Grant, Joshua Waddell

Civil War Book Review

In 1854, U.S. Army Captain Ulysses S. Grant underwent a demoralizing stretch in his military career. Following his service in the Mexican American War, the Army transferred Grant to the isolated Fort Humboldt in northern California. Separated from his wife, Julia, and their two children, Grant suffered intense bouts of loneliness and occasionally turned to alcohol for reprieve. Grant’s drinking eventually bled into his work, and his superior officer forced his resignation after Grant arrived at a pay meeting hungover. He returned home in shame, and many, including his father Jesse, had lost faith in him. Few would have expected …

The Abolitionist Civil War: Immediatists And The Struggle To Transform The Union, Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz

Civil War Book Review

In The Abolitionist Civil War, Frank J. Cirillo offers a much-needed study of abolitionist activity during the Civil War. In twelve tightly chronological chapters, he highlights the ideas, interventions, and arguments of abolitionists from Secession Winter through May 1865. Cirillo focuses on ten abolitionists ranging from well-known figures William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass to lesser-known folks such as George Cheever and Stephen and Abby Kelley Foster to the Virginia outlier Moncure Conway, and he sorts them into several fluctuating camps based on how they chose to engage with Civil War politics. Ultimately, he argues that in the majority’s wartime …

War, Politics, & Change, Kennon H. Keiser Jr.

Civil War Book Review

Historians have long documented the ways in which war and politics bring about social, economic, and cultural change. Nowhere is this more evident than during the American Civil War and Reconstruction. The war devastated the South; it upended the system of chattel slavery and instigated remarkable transformations to the region’s demographics, political, and economic structures. Reconstruction emerged out of the ashes of war. This critical and hotly debated period redefined U.S. citizenship, expanded suffrage rights, and altered the relationship between the federal government and the states. Many of the lofty goals of Reconstruction, however, fell short as southern “Redeemers” regained …

Sand, Science, And The Civil War: Sedimentary Geology And Combat, Erin Stewart Mauldin

Civil War Book Review

Scott Hippensteel’s Sand, Science, and the Civil War fills

a critical gap in several different literatures on America’s Civil War. Across 20 brief chapters, Hippensteel demonstrates how sedimentary geology affected military operations on a range of scales, from the continental creation of mountains that acted as offensive obstacles to the weathering of sand into an effective force multiplier for coastal fortifications. Hippensteel is not a historian by training—he is an associate professor of earth sciences—and perhaps for that reason, Sand, Science, and the Civil War does not follow the expected structure or chronology of a typical history monograph. Nevertheless, Hippensteel’s …

Interculturality, Creolization, And Globalization In "Ángeles Nómadas" By Minelys Sánchez, Cecily Bernard

Comparative Woman

No abstract provided.

Biology, Ecology, And Management Of Redbanded Stink Bug (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae), Olabimpe O. Okosun, Justin George, Maribel Portilla, James P. Glover, Katherine A. Parys, Gadi V.P. Reddy

Faculty Publications

The redbanded stink bug (RBSB), Piezodorus guildinii (Westwood) (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) is an invasive stink bug species and a polyphagous pest of cultivated crops and non-cultivated wild plants. The increase in soybean cultivation during the 1960s-1970s led to the spread of RBSB as an economic pest of soybean throughout South America, especially in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. In the early 2000s, RBSB became an economic concern to US agriculture and is currently a key species in a stink bug complex that damages soybean in many mid-southern states. RBSB causes extensive damage to soybeans and other economically important leguminous crops by feeding …

Understanding Inequality In U.S. Farm Subsidies Using Large-Scale Administrative Data, Jisang Yu, Sunghun Lim

Faculty Publications

Using a large-scale, individual-level administrative data set for 2008–2021, we document the inequality in farm program payments across all recipients in the U.S. By examining the relationship between within-county inequality and demographic characteristics of farmers in a county, we find that there is a positive association between the share of Black operators and within-county inequality. We also provide suggestive evidence that a substantial portion of racial and gender disparities in farm payments are associated with crop production characteristics. We then utilize name information in farm payment data to infer the race and gender of individual payees. The analysis using approximately …

Madness As Response To Inherent Cultural Conflicts In Anglophone Fiction From 1700 To 2020, Anna Klambauer

Comparative Woman

Madness in literature has a long and colourful history. While its representation varies significantly in different literary periods, madness is nonetheless a consistent theme responding to inherent conflicts of civilisation. Thus, in the eighteenth-century novel, madness is subdued and forced to express itself in the language of rationality, while in the nineteenth century the theme becomes increasingly subversive. In the form of the madwoman trope (Gilbert and Gubar 1979), madness is simultaneously a reaction to restrictive patriarchal norms, and a frame in which the gender conflicts of the time can be safely and effectively played out. In the twentieth century, …

"Too Immoral To Be Narrated By A Woman": Censoring Erotic Fiction Of Arab Women Writers In Girls Of Riyadh And Distant View Of A Minaret And Other Stories, Muhammed Salem

Comparative Woman

In the Arab world, bargaining with censorship has been an ongoing struggle for writers, particularly female authors. How could we explain that only male writers were allowed to discuss sexuality in the Arabic canon, insofar as female characters are portrayed as passive sexual objects? Are Arab women writers victims of double censorship? One is imposed on their fellow male writers, and another is tacit censorship which judges women’s morality based on their writing. Girls of Riyadh (2007) by Saudi novelist, Rajaa Abdullah Alsanea, and Distant View of the Minaret and Other Stories (1987) by Egyptian novelist, Alifa Rifaat, are two …

Feminist Phenomenology And First-Person Narrative: Understanding Gender And Social Conflict In Anna Burns’ Milkman, Sushree Routray, Rashmi Gaur Professor

Comparative Woman

In her magnum opus Milkman (2018), Anna Burns employs a subversive and artfully crafted first-person narrative, deftly exposing the arduous and tumultuous struggles encountered by individuals who dare to defy the confines of traditional gender roles. Through a relentless and unflinching narrative, the novel fearlessly confronts the harrowing manifestations of psychological torment, the insidious spectre of relentless stalking, and the manipulative machinations of gaslighting, all the while fervently interrogating the notion of a fixed and immutable gender identity. In a relentless odyssey toward self-realization, the protagonist's journey unfurls against a backdrop of traumatic events and the unyielding pressures imposed by …

Women, Animals, Food: Planetary Perspectives On The Non-(Hu)Man, Samu/Elle Striewski

Comparative Woman

The paper comparatively reads Mahasweta Devi’s Pterodactyl, Pirtha, and Puran Sahay (1995) and Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood (2009) to trace the ways in which both novels show the complex intertwinement of the climate crisis with gender, class, race, subalternity, anthropocentrism, and veganism. Bringing together Gayatri C. Spivak’s notion of “planetarity” with ecofeminist philosophy and literary criticism, the article proposes a planetary ecogender reading of the two texts and their representation of the non-man, non-human, and non-subject. Building up further on Jacques Derrida’s critique of carno-phallogocentrism, the pedagogy of a relational ethics of “nurturing” is hence presented …

Expanding The Scope: Multimodal Dimensions In Aphasia Discourse Analysis—Preliminary Findings, Manaswita Dutta, Bijoyaa Mohapatra

Faculty Publications

Background: Aphasia, resulting from acquired brain injury, disrupts language processing and usage, significantly impacting individuals’ social communication and life participation. Given the limitations of traditional assessments in capturing the nuanced challenges faced by individuals with aphasia, this study seeks to explore the potential benefits of integrating multimodal communication elements into discourse analysis to better capture narrative proficiency in this population. Objective: This study examined how incorporating multimodal communication elements (e.g., physical gestures, writing, drawing) into discourse analysis may affect the narrative outcomes of persons with aphasia compared to those observed using methods that exclude multimodal considerations. Methods: Participants included individuals …

Memory And Myth In The Creation Of Identity: The Establishment Of The Vernal Public Library, Suzanne Marie Stauffer

Faculty Publications

Local history and lore reports that the Vernal Public Library owed its inception to a performance of Queen Esther Opera in 1907. However, the Vernal Express makes no mention of such a performance (nor can any such opera be identified), while it does record multiple other community fundraising events held to benefit the public library. One such, a unique event in public library history, occurred in 1908 when the public library association held a benefit performance of a stage version of Owen Wister’s popular Western novel, The Virginian. This documented event, however, seems to have been lost to history, as …

Editorial, James P. Gregory Jr.

Civil War Book Review

No abstract provided.

The Lavatory Lens: Tracking The Global Movement Of Pathogens Via Aircraft Wastewater, Aaron Bivins, Robert Morfino, Andrew Franklin, Stuart Simpson, Warish Ahmed

Faculty Publications

Modern commercial air travel connects disparate human populations. The global airline industry transported as many as 4.5 billion passengers annually in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic. While such connections are convenient for commerce and tourism, air travel networks can also be efficient distributors of infectious diseases. During the COVID-19 pandemic, public health agencies used multi-layered control strategies to manage the risk of COVID-19 transmission associated with air travel. Simultaneously, the surveillance of aircraft wastewater was further developed as a promising new method to screen for COVID-19, including newly emerging lineages, among international travelers. Herein, we review the …

Editor’S Introduction: Special Issue On The 2022 Midterm Congressional Election, Joel Sievert, James C. Garand

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Editorial: How Rsv Outsmarts The Host, Stephania A. Cormier, Lawrence M. Kauvar, Ralph A. Tripp

Division of Basic Science Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Predicting Severe Covid-19 Using Readily Available Admission Indicators: Spo2/Fio2 Ratio, Comorbidity Index, And Gender, Luan D. Vu, Rebecca C. Christofferson, Hollis R. O’Neal, Diana Hamer, Anh T.Q. Phan, Katie M. Vance, E. A. Turner, Avinash Kumar, Ibrahim Musa Yola, Natalie Lim, Beverly Ogden, Stephania A. Cormier

Division of Basic Science Faculty Publications

The focus of this study was to identify risk factors for severe and critical COVID-19, evaluate local respiratory immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection, and develop a prognostic tool for COVID-19 severity using accessible early indicators. Using nasopharyngeal swab samples from hospitalized patients with COVID-19 of varying severity during the first wave of the pandemic from March to May 2020 in Louisiana, we evaluated the association between COVID-19 severity and viral load, respiratory immune mediators, and demographic/clinical factors. We found that the SpO2/FiO2 ratio at triage, total comorbidity burden (represented by Charlson Comorbidity Index), and gender were significantly associated with COVID-19 …

Covid-19 As A Chronic Stressor And The Importance Of Individual Identity: A Data-Driven Look At Academic Productivity During The Pandemic, Breanna N. Harris, Carolyn M. Bauer, James A. Carr, Caitlin R. Gabor, Jennifer L. Grindstaff, Caleigh Guoynes, Jennifer J. Heppner, Cris C. Ledon-Rettig, Patricia C. Lopes, Sharon E. Lynn, Carla B. Madelaire, Lorin A. Neuman-Lee, Maria G. Palacios, Paul Soto, Jennifer Terry

Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted personal and professional life. For academics, research, teaching, and service tasks were upended and we all had to navigate the altered landscape. However, some individuals faced a disproportionate burden, particularly academics with minoritized identities or those who were early career, were caregivers, or had intersecting identities. As comparative endocrinologists, we determine how aspects of individual and species-level variation influence response to, recovery from, and resilience in the face of stressors. Here, we flip that framework and apply an integrative biological lens to the impact of the COVID-19 chronic stressor on our endocrine community. We address how …

Alcohol And Cannabis Dual Use Among Black Adults: Associations With Alcohol Use, Use-Related Problems, And Race-Based Discrimination, Julia D. Buckner, Michael J. Zvolensky, Caroline R. Scherzer

Faculty Publications

Background and Objectives: Black adults who drink alcohol appear at risk for poor alcohol-related outcomes, yet little research has examined whether cannabis use among those who consume alcohol (alcohol-cannabis dual use) is related to worse alcohol-related consequences, as observed in predominantly White samples. Further, it may be that experiencing more race-based discrimination may be related to using multiple substances to cope with such experiences; however, no known studies have examined the impact of race-based discrimination on alcohol-cannabis dual use. Methods: Participants were 270 Black undergraduates who endorsed past-month drinking, 112 of whom endorsed alcohol-cannabis dual use. Results: The dual use …