About the Civil War Institute Summer Conference 2016
The 2016 Conference is SOLD OUT*
Registration for CWI 2017 Opens June 17th!
Reconstruction and the Legacy of the War.
Every summer for the last thirty years, the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College has hosted a summer conference where public audiences and leading historians come together for small group discussions, battlefield tours, panel debates, and presentations. Sessions, lodging, and meals are held on the 200-acre college campus.
Despite the fact that media outlets have already proclaimed the end of the sesquicentennial with retrospectives on the anniversary, at CWI, the commemoration continues. There is no one date that definitively marks the end of the war, and ending anniversary commemorations in 2015 obscures the close linkages between the conflict and its aftermath. For that reason, CWI’s chronological march through the war will continue in 2016 with Reconstruction and the Legacy of the War. This conference – one of the first of its kind for a popular audience – will include a number of exciting new formats: small-group overview sessions, battlefield tours exploring postwar use of the Gettysburg battlefield, and breakout sessions devoted to Reconstruction through biography.
Some of the topics to be explored include:
- The Reconstruction Sesquicentennial
- Reconstruction and Civil War Memory
- The World Wars at Gettysburg
- Reconstruction in the West
- Veterans’ Return Home
- Reconstructing Southern Womanhood
The CWI conference is noted for offering fresh perspectives and new angles on the Civil War as part of an exciting and engaging dialogue between experts and general audiences. Experts for our 2016 conference include:
- Brooks Simpson
- Ed Ayers
- Bill Link
- Caroline Janney
- Mark Summers
- Scott Hartwig
- Lesley Gordon
Curious about what it's like to attend the Civil War Institute summer conference? Watch the video below to learn what sets the CWI apart, and what you can expect as an attendee:
For more information please click on "Further Official Information" below.