A Sense of the Sesquicentennial

Beth Parnicza speaking at the Senior Center in Charlottesville.

On April 23, 2015, Beth Parnicza presented the fifth of our six part CPN Thursday series entitled The Civil War Through Different Lenses (2015).

In this podcast, Ms. Parnicza shares her personal memories of four years of the American Civil War sesquicentennial visiting and tour leading, a review of the Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park’s four commemorations as well as a look at the broader picture of trying to understand what the sesquicentennial was about and what it means to us now and in the future.

Beth Parnicza is an historian with the National Parks Service at the Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park where she supervises the Chancellorsville Battlefield Center and manages volunteers and social media. A 2011 graduate of West Virginia University, her research interests focuses largely on the human element of the Civil War, particularly in understanding the steps taken by individuals toward a harder kind of war and their motivations to do so.

The lecture series was organized by award-winning historian and Charlottesville-based author, lecturer, and cartographer Rick Britton in conjunction with the Senior Center in Charlottesville.

Click here to listen to all six parts of this series.