Symposium

Even though it is not due until September, I’ve started working on a proposal for the symposium being held at North Carolina Museum of History in May 2011. I’ve got two ideas that I’m working on, and would really appreciate your thoughts. The first idea is one that I’ve talked a lot about here on this blog, and one that I am familiar with from my own books: the role of regimental histories (particularly ones written by North Carolinians) and the process of memory. If you have followed my scribbling for any time, you know that I spend a lot of time pondering what the veterans themselves wrote after the war.

The other idea I have is also a line of thought from some of my research and writing: the placement of monuments in western North Carolina commemorating Confederate (and Union) soldiers (or the lackthereof). Since I have produced formal or pictorial histories of Watauga, Avery, Mitchell, Caldwell, and Yancey, I’ve studied this idea somewhat.

So, of those two ideas, what do you think? Which one would you follow?