The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship by Deborah Willis (review)

Abstract

diverse responses from listeners.” Thomas characterizes this ethic of reciprocity as embedded in the collective research processes that undergird the project and indeed the book itself is structured in a call-and-response format, incorporating the voices of eight authors, ranging from undergraduate students to community members to professors. While the website and other repositories of the project’s primary research may attract a broader audience, Call My Name, Clemson is informative for scholars housed in academic institutions and interested in the mechanics of social justice work in the academy and local community. As a case study of what public humanities might look like from the ground up, the book is commendably detailed and informative, although more explicit and sustained connections to conversations about memorialization on other college campuses would have been welcome. Mapped against social and cultural conversations about Black Lives Matter and pervasive anti-Black racism in the United States as they have played out over the past fifteen years, however, Call My Name, Clemson is a powerful model for effecting material change on college campuses through deliberately collaborative public humanities research.