Dr. McNutt Publishes Research on Confederate Flag

June 4, 2018

Congratulations to Dr. Ryan McNutt on his recent publication “What’s Left of the Flag”: The Confederate and Jacobite ’Lost Cause" Myths, and the Construction of Mythic Identities through Conflict Commemoration.

You can read the article’s abstract below and the entire article in the Journal of Conflict Archaeology. 

The use of battlefields and associated conflict sites provide tantalising hooks upon which to hand tapestries of grand narratives relating to regional and national identities, often defined by what the identities are not. This paper examines the unlikely connection between Jacobite and Confederate romanticism, and how battlefields, conflict related sites, and symbolic material culture are mobilised through active commemoration by some heritage groups in support of a created, mythic identity of a ‘Southern Celt’. Furthermore, it examines the production of a mythic history that whitewashes and recasts the Confederacy, the reality of the Civil War, and the Confederate Flag, while at the same time minimizing, hiding, or ignoring competing narratives.