Members of the Rutgers community and the general public are invited to a lunch-time presentation on "Living Casualties of War: A Historiography of the Psychological Disposition of Civil War Soldiers" by Katherine Fleming, on Thursday, October 11, 2012 starting at 12:00 noon. This event will be held in the Remigio U. Pane Room, on the first floor of the Archibald S. Alexander Library in New Brunswick.

During the American Civil War, 620,000 soldiers met their untimely deaths - a statistic that does not include surviving soldiers who psychologically suffered from the horrors of war. The history of the mentality of the Civil War soldier is continuously being reformulated, re-examined, and fragmented. This presentation will examine three notable inconsistencies in the study of the psychological disposition of Civil War soldiers: when the study of the Civil War soldier as a psychological victim began, the circumstances that contributed to the development of mental illness, and whether or not there was vast disillusionment with the war and life itself after 1865. The presentation will also include case files of soldiers and reports from doctors from the New Jersey Home for Disabled Soldiers in Newark and the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital.

Katherine Fleming is a graduate of Douglass College, Rutgers University and Seton Hall University and holds a bachelor and master's degree in American history. She has worked in the Paleontology Department at the American Museum of Natural History, the exhibitions department at the Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island Immigration Museum, and the Rutgers Special Collections and University Archives where she assisted with the current Civil War exhibit.

For more information about this event or to request assistance with parking, please contact Fernanda H. Perrone, Special Collections and University Archives exhibitions coordinator, at 848-932-6154 or hperrone@rulmail.rutgers.edu.