Sure glad that the "Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader" didn't win the Museum of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis medal

I am working with activists here and there working to get rid of Confederate monuments.

I have been handing out free some of my books including the "Reader."

With Jefferson Davis statues being taken down I am certainly glad that I don't have a Jefferson Davis medal printed on the 2nd edition, or some nonsense about it getting a Jefferson Davis award. Or something like this on the web page for the book or in book advertisements. I had to work on making sure this didn't happen. I had to put up with a lot of stuff and nonsense trying to persuade me to submit the book for the award.

This is the first part of the series I wrote on the Museum of the Confederacy which discusses why I wrote it so my book would not get the award.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/441/441_museum_confederacy_sebesta_guest_share.html

I am glad that I don't have to try to explain this away, with explanations that wouldn't be believed.

Of course this made me rather unpopular in the Civil War History profession. Many denunciations on Kevin Levin's blog.

http://cwmemory.com/2012/03/04/has-edward-sebesta-ever-visited-the-museum-of-the-confederacy/

http://cwmemory.com/2011/12/06/a-response-to-edward-sebesta/

http://cwmemory.com/2011/09/15/calling-out-edward-sebesta-and-calling-on-james-loewen/

http://cwmemory.com/2011/09/14/a-quick-response-to-edward-sebesta/

http://cwmemory.com/2010/12/09/the-edward-sebesta-circus-continues/

The "circus continues" is reference to an earlier activity in which I got a group of scholars to co-sign a letter to Obama asking him not to send a wreath to the Arlington Confederate memorial. That Levin is implying is a circus also, thus it is continuing.

Brook D. Simpson was critical of this as well.

https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/ed-sebestas-dilemma/

https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/edward-sebestas-publicity-stunt/

Simpson was on the masthead of Civil War History.

Neither of them would read even the first installment of the history.

Outside the Civil War history profession scholars thought my position was both sensible and obvious. One even wondered whether Loewen had gone "Genovese."

However, now in retrospect these denunciations just document how increasingly out of touch the Civil War history profession was and how they live in a Civil War Round Table reality, a world which is fading away.

What might be considered is how these Confederate monuments served to normalize the Civil War Round Table world and a historical profession that pandered to them and now as the monuments leave how abnormal the Civil War Round Table world will be perceived.

Of course there will always be a place for the Civil War Round Table where they can ruminate on brass alloys used in Civil War uniform buttons or perhaps the topic of mosquitoes and other biting insects at Gettysburg battlefield and resolutely ignore the issues of neo-Confederacy and race. This would likely be at the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College.

Interest in the Civil War is dying because of a Civil War history profession and Civil War Round Tables which have a focus which isn't of interest to the modern world.

Kevin Levin's "innocent" Civil War Round Tables. How he enables banal white nationalism

Kevin Levin has this recent posting on his blog. 

http://cwmemory.com/2016/12/03/the-decline-of-civil-war-round-tables/

In discussing how the Civil War Round Table avoided the issues of race and gender he states:

"An innocence about the past that was nurtured and even protected at Civil War Round Tables has been irretrievably lost. 

I am not sure that this is necessarily something that should be lamented."

Was it is an "innocence?" Did the Civil War Round Tables not know?  Many scholars at the time when these Round Tables started were aware that the Civil War was about race and slavery.

The Civil War Round Tables were created by people who chose a "romance of reunion" interpretation  of the Civil War and rejected the idea of the Civil War being about race and slavery and did consciously avoid the issues of race and gender. There was nothing "innocent" about it.

Note the term "lost" instead of "rejected." Then his half-hearted rejection of lamenting for this lost. He couches it in terms of "not sure"

What is really regrettable, is that Levin is an editor of a book on understanding Confederate monuments. This really is an indictment of the history profession that he would be selected as an editor of a publication by an academic society.

http://cwmemory.com/2016/12/01/aaslh-reconsiders-confederate-memorials-and-monuments/

A couple of use are going to periscope the Robert E. Lee statue in Dallas, Texas on Dec. 31st. We will have our own interpretation.  There is a wider academic world outside the Civil War history profession.

https://www.facebook.com/events/241643326251832/

Kevin Levin might consider that he and his colleagues might come to be thought of as the Eugene Genovese's of the future.