Beyond the Civil War Hospital: The Rhetoric of Healing and Democratization in Northern Reconstruction Writing 1861-1882

Beyond the Civil War Hospital argues that Reconstruction was a period of emotional turmoil that precipitated a struggle for form in cultural production. By treating selected texts from that era as multifaceted contributions to Reconstruction's "mental adaptation process," Kirsten Twelbeck diagnoses individual conflicts between the "heart and the brain" only partly compensated for by a shared concern for national healing. By tracing each text's individual adaptation of the healing trope, she identifies surprising disagreement over racial equality, women's rights, and citizenship. The book pairs female and male white authors from the antislavery North, bringing together a broad range of genres.

Kirsten Twelbeck has taught American studies at several German universities. She is particularly interested in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and culture.