David Blight will host and moderate the Gilder Lehrman Center's Annual International Fall Conference, "Disunion in Civil War America: Parallels for Today?" held in Luce Hall at Yale University.

American political culture today is in need of historical grounding. The anxiety occurring in the wake of the November 2016 U.S. presidential election has prompted a search for historical parallels to help us understand our contemporary moment of political upheaval, white supremacy, crises over immigrants and refugees, and possible realignments of political parties. This conference examines the American party system, political coalitions, realignment, and violent conflict during the 1840s and 1850s as an earlier example of deep currents of fear and disorder within U.S. political culture and history. Panelists will include historians, political scientists, journalists, and legal scholars, as we seek to link past and present in order to address big questions about history for a broad public.  This conference is being organized in collaboration with Professor James Oakes of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and Dr. Joe Murphy, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the New-York Historical Society.

The conference is free and open to the public. Registration is required.

For more information and to register for the Gilder Lehrman Center's 17th Annual International Conference go to: http://glc.yale.edu/events/conferences/19th-annual-conference

For more information on the Gilder Lehrman Center go to: http://glc.yale.edu/