As Editors of the Journal, we have promoted the publication of roundtable discussions to foster an interdisciplinary perspective on Civil War studies. These sessions have convened scholars from a range of disciplines to examine various aspects of the Civil War. Beyond the field of history, numerous academics are actively researching, engaging with, and teaching about the Civil War. These forums have consistently offered new and exciting ways to approach the war. Check out some of our previous conversations below.
Previous Roundtables
Volume 71, No. 2 (June 2025): “An Interdisciplinary Discussion on Robin Bernstein’s Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit“
Moderator: Jim Downs
Participants: Evan Kutzler, Jonathan Lande, Koritha Mitchell, Heather Ann Thompson, Crystal Webster, Jonathan Wells
(pdcnet.org | Project MUSE)
Volume 70, No. 2 (June 2024): “What’s Love Got to Do with It?”: Roundtable on the Cultural Legacy of Eric W. Lott’s Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class on Its Thirtieth Anniversary
Moderator: Rhae Lynn Barnes
Participants: Daphne A. Brooks, Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Scott Gac, Matthew Frye Jacobson, Josephine Lee, and David R. Roediger
(pdcnet.org | Project MUSE)
Volume 70, No. 1 (March 2024): “Does the Civil War Matter?: A Roundtable Discussion
Moderator: Jim Downs
Participants: Yoni Appelbaum, Drew Gilpin Faust, Kerri K. Greenidge, Stephanie McCurry, Megan Kate Nelson, and Adam I. P. Smith
(pdcnet.org | Project MUSE)
Volume 69, No. 4 (December 2023): A Novel as Archive: A Roundtable on Frances E. W. Harper’s 1892 Novel, Iola Leroy, about the Civil War and Reconstruction
Moderator: Jim Downs
Participants: Rhae Lynn Barnes, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Rashauna Johnson, and John Stauffer, with Faith Smith and Nii Ayikwei Parkes
(pdcnet.org | Project MUSE)
Volume 68, No. 4 (December 2022): A Roundtable Discussion on Deborah Willis’s The Black Civil War Soldier: The Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship
Moderator: Jim Downs
Participants: David W. Blight, Cheryl Finley, Matthew Fox-Amato, Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, Nell Painter, Ann M. Shumard, and Deborah Willis
(pdcnet.org | Project MUSE)
Civil War History 