ANDREW DONNELLY W/ EVA PAYNE: CONFEDERATE SYMPATHIES
Join us as we welcome ANDREW DONNELLY in conversation with EVA PAYNE on MONDAY, April 28 at 6:00 PM to celebrate the release of his new book CONFEDERATE SYMPATHIES: SAME-SEX ROMANCE, DISUNION, AND REUNION IN THE CIVIL WAR ERA.
This event is free and open to the public, but in order for us to track expected attendance, please let us know you’re coming via the RSVP link on our website.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
The archive of the Civil War era is filled with depictions of men’s same-sex affections and intimacies. Across antebellum campaign biographies, proslavery fiction, published memoirs of Confederate veterans and Union prisoners of war, Civil War novels, newspaper accounts, and the war’s historiography, homoerotic symbolism and narratives shaped the era’s politics, as well as the meaning and memory of the war. The Civil War, in turn, shaped the development of homosexuality in the United States. In a book full of surprising insights, Andrew Donnelly uncovers this deeply consequential queer history at the heart of nineteenth-century national culture. Donnelly’s sharp analytical eye particularly focuses on the ways Northern white men imagined their relationship with white Southerners through narratives of same-sex affection. Assessing the cultural work of these narratives, Donnelly argues that male homoeroticism enabled proslavery coalition building among antebellum Democrats, fostered sympathy for the national retreat from Reconstruction, and contributed to the victories of Lost Cause ideology. Linking the era’s political and cultural history to the history of homosexuality, Donnelly reveals that male homoeroticism was not inherently radical but rather cultivated political sympathy for slavery, the Confederacy, and white supremacy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Andrew Donnelly is a literary and cultural historian specializing in the U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction periods and in the field of Southern Studies. He is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Memphis and received his PhD from Harvard University in 2020. His research has been supported by fellowships from the Boston Athenaeum, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Center for Mark Twain Studies, and the Library Company of Philadelphia.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER:
Eva Payne is assistant professor of history at the University of Mississippi. Her first book, Empire of Purity: The History of Americans’ Global War on Prostitution was published by Princeton University Press in November 2024. She serves as the codirector of the Queer Mississippi Histories Project, which documents and preserves Mississippi’s LGBTQ history.
