Next up for Research Month: CWI at Gettysburg

          The next event in our 30-day observation of Speedyleeway Research Month is the June 20-24 Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College.

          This is one of the crowning events on the Speedylee calendar every year.

          The Civil War Institute is a five-day gathering of those of us interested in the history of the terrible war that cost hundreds of thousands of families untold pain and suffering. It also ended slavery on the North American continent and, in the approximate words of Shelby Foote, changed our nation from those United States of America to the United States of America.

          The CWI annually gathers the leading scholars on the subject together with like-minded enthusiasts. The event includes addresses in large halls and meetings in classrooms for lectures and discussions. New to the CWI last year was the dine-in concept whereupon individual professors/authors eat dinner with small, assigned groups to discuss a specific topic about the war. There are two nights of dine-ins this year.

          All-day tours to various battlefields are offered as a part of the package as are half day tours of the Gettysburg battlefield.

          Your loyal blogger has never left the CWI without feeling energized and excited. The single problem with leaving the CWI is the idea that the next Gettysburg conference is 360 days into the future. That’s a long wait. Not as bad as waiting two years until the next Pro Football Researchers Association meeting, but still a long wait.

          Some of the classroom sessions, which the CWI terms ‘Breakout Sessions,’ are assigned and others are open to selection by attendees. These sessions are usually very interesting and because the size of the gathering is small enough, there is plenty of interaction with the speaker.

          Yours truly takes notes during every session, including the walking tours, and I ask a lot of questions. A lot of questions.

          The CWI offers scholarship deals for high school students interested in attending and lots of teachers attend also.

It’s too late for 2014, obviously, but you can find the CWI at www.gettysburg.edu/cwi/. The info about the next year usually starts showing up soon after the completion of the last one.

 

          Thanks for reading and happy Research Month!