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More Than Ectoplasm

A Study of Civil War Memory and Southern Ghostlore

Kayla M. Jordan will be coming to talk about her presentation, More than Ectoplasm: A Study of Civil War Memory and Southern Ghostlore.

Presentation description:

"Many ghost stories in the South are centered around the American Civil War. However, what has been presented in these tales as historical fact is often misleading due to numerous social and cultural factors including historical romanticization and the Lost Cause. This talk will view these particular ghost stories in comparison to historical sources and analyze the impact that they have had on public perception of the conflict and its aftermath."

Kayla Jordan is a PhD student in History at the University of Alabama. Her research focuses on 19th and 20th century southern ghostlore and its connections to social, cultural, and ideological trends within and surrounding the region. This work often focuses on aspects of identity formation and social control, Civil War memory, and various cultural rituals of mourning and understandings of death/dying. Ms. Jordan earned both her B.A. (2020) and M.A. (2022) in History from Mississippi State University, and she has worked for nearly a decade in museums and archives in Alabama as a docent, intern, and volunteer archivist and conservator.

Kayla is a participant in the AHA Young Scholars Program which brings young historians into the Speaker's Bureau to share their research with the public.

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