Ashp Podcast

Frank Bidart, Wellesley CollegeVijay Seshadri, Sarah Lawrence CollegeKevin Young, Emory UniversitySally Dawidoff (moderator), American Social History ProjectThe Association of Writers and Writing Programs ConferenceWashington, DC, February 5, 2011In the second part of this two-part panel discussion, held at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, distinguished contemporary American writers Frank Bidart, Vijay Seshadri, and Kevin Young talk about writing about the Civil War 150 years after it began. Seshadri grew up an immigrant child of an immigrant father obsessed with the war; Young comes to the subject as a twenty-first-century African-American poet living in the South; and Bidart was spurred to write about Gettysburg by “the world created by the Bush administration.” Allen Tate and Robert Lowell’s seminal odes are also read and discussed. For all these writers, the war has become part of their Americanness.Part 1: Introduction by Sally DawidoffReadings:Ode to the Confederate Dead by Al