Radical Shifts: Gender, Class, & Belonging Post-Civil War

Set a decade after Union victory in the American Civil War, Murder by Degrees invites readers into a thrilling murder mystery. It also offers a view of an American city radically transformed by the Civil War, particularly women’s public facing wartime work in medicine, science, and education, as well as class dynamics in a growing urban environment entering an great age of wealth known as the “gilded age.” This talk explains how and why the Civil War catalyzed these major changes in American intellectual life and society, especially when it came to issues of gender, class, and belonging in post-war Philadelphia.