New Canaan Library presents a fascinating lecture by historian and professor Catherine Clinton, who will discuss the wide range of roles women took on during the Civil War. The live webinar will take place on Thursday, October 21 at 7 PM EST. Please register at newcanaanlibrary.org for Zoom sign in.
This program supports the Library’s annual Literary Luncheon fundraiser, an event that this year features author Martha Hall Kelly, speaking on Sunflower Sisters, her latest historical novel set during the Civil War years.

Most depictions of the Civil War – be it literature, documentaries, or art – focus heavily on male soldiers and military leaders. Women, however, played important roles during the Civil War, moving beyond moral support and keeping the home together to roles ranging from medical and nursing to espionage and actual military action. Professor Clinton will explore the topic and also address what aspects of women’s lives during this era have been researched by historians and what topics future scholarship might explore.
Catherine Clinton holds the Denman Chair of American History at the University of Texas in San Antonio and is Professor Emerita at Queen’s University Belfast. She has served on the executive council of the Society of American Historians and on the Advisory Committee of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Bicentennial Commission, and she remains on advisory boards for Civil War History, Civil War Times, The President’s Cottage and Soldier’s Home, and Ford’s Theatre.
Clinton has written and edited over thirty books, from children’s fiction about Phillis Wheatley and the Columbia Guide to American Women in the Nineteenth Century to booklets for the National Park Service to poetry anthologies. Her first book, The Plantation Mistress: Woman’s World in the Old South, appeared in 1982 and was a selection of the History Book Club; her 2004 biography of Harriet Tubman, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom, was named as one of the best non-fiction books by the Christian Science Monitor and the Chicago Tribune.