The materiality of civility in the love between two men in the American Civil War

How is civility enacted and recognized through moment-to-moment exchanges between individuals? My project, a material history of the love between two men who served in the same Union regiment during the American Civil War,... [ view full abstract ]

How is civility enacted and recognized through moment-to-moment exchanges between individuals? My project, a material history of the love between two men who served in the same Union regiment during the American Civil War, trains our senses to the web of objects (which include not only artifacts, but also gestures, looks, words, and places) through which civility is both established and denied. I will look closely at one of a string of moments (as reported in a wartime letter home) when the care and intimacy between these two men appears at war. I am most interested in how these encounters function and hold meaning for a broader sense of social cohesion and governance. Crucially, what is the place of ambivalence, when an object offering could be read as a threat or assurance of stability and trust, in ensuring the union between men in distinction from that with the ‘enemy’?