American Studies postgraduate student and Centre for Research in Race and Rights research associate delivers keynote

James Brookes spoke to around 80 people this past Saturday at St. Bonaventure University in New York

Titled "The Last and Most Precious Memento: Portrait Photography and the Union Soldier", the keynote talk explored Civil War soldiers' visual self-representation, showing that they sought to understand and express their experiences and identities via often very new forms of visual technology. It argued for a transformation in how individuals used visual culture during the Civil War, even as the war transformed visual technologies and as imagery transformed the civilian public's experience of the war itself. This amounted to a revolution in visual culture, James argued, when imagery became (for the first time in world history) a soldiers' tool. He was invited to deliver this talk because of his contributions to the Emerging Civil War Blog, a forum for emerging historians of the Civil War to engage with both academic and non-academic audiences. The symposium accompanied the 30th annual reunion of the descendants of the 154th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, a Civil War regiment raised in southwestern New York state's Cattaraugus and Chautauqua counties. Known as the Hardtack Regiment, the 154th was raised in the summer of 1862 and participated in many of the great campaigns and battles of the war, including Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Chattanooga, the Atlanta Campaign and Gen. William T. Sherman's marches through Georgia and the Carolinas. The reunion and accompanying symposium celebrated the donation to St. Bonaventure's Friedsam Memorial Library of the Mark H. Dunkelman and Michael J. Winey Collection of the 154th New York Volunteer Infantry. The collection includes documentary material as well as numerous prints, objects, and artifacts related to the regiment. As well as delivering a keynote, James also was one of the first researchers to explore this new collection, gathering archival material for both his current MRes disseration and the PhD that he begins this autumn. You can read more about the day's events and check out James' writings for the Emerging Civil War forum. He was supported in this trip by an award from the School of Culture, Languages and Area Studies Postgraduate Research Fund.