The Filson Historical Society’s Institute For Advanced Study is offering a two-day academic conference that explores the experience of POWs in all American conflicts since the colonial period. Too often prisoners of war have been considered by historians to be a special, separate topic.  If discussed at all, POWs make only a brief appearance in legal histories or in the history of POW policies or histories of POW camps.  They show up as sums in casualty lists or are discussed as a burden on military resources, creating more mouths to feed, house and guard.  This conference considers prisoners of war as more than simply casualties, losers or victims by examining the range of ways in which POWs played an active role in the conduct and outcome of America’s military encounters. Called to Arms: Kentuckians in the First World War, The Filson’s exhibit honoring the centennial of the US entry into the First World War will also be open during the symposium.

To download a PDF copy of the brochure, please click here.

Friday, October 27: 

9:00 am -  Introductory Remarks

9:30 -10:30 am – Keynote Speech Lorien Foote, Texas A&M and Daniel Krebs, University of Louisville “More Than Numbers:  New Ways to Integrate POWs into the History of Warfare”

10:45 -12:15 pm  - Session 1: The Ideology and Politics of Captivity in War and Beyond

• “Inimical to the States:  Loyalist Prisoners and the Problem of Civil War in the American Revolution” Cole T. Jones, Purdue University
•  “Forgotten Prisoners:  Communist POWs in the Vietnam War, 1965-1975” Marcel Berni, University of Hamburg, Germany
•  “WWII POW and US Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan POW”” James Quinn, University of Missouri Science and Technology

12:15-1:00 pm – Lunch

1:00- 2:30 pm - Session 2:  Toward a Cultural History of Captivity - Race, Agency, and the Republic of Letters

• “Information Access, Agency and Autonomy for Prisoners of War During the Civil War”” Bao Bui, Stephen F. Austin State University 
•  “American Exceptionalism?  The Experience of Doughboy Prisoners of the First World War” Brian Feltman, Georgia Southern University
• “Would They Be Worth The Effort?  The Influence of Race on American Reeducation Programs for German and Japanese POWs in the US During WWII” Adam Rock, Southern Mississippi University

2:45- 4:15 pm - Session 3: An Integral Part of the War Effort - POWs and Military Strategy

• “Blue or Gray?  Taking Advantage of the Civil War Prisoner System” Earl Hess, Lincoln Memorial University
• “Reduction and the Collective Criminalization of Confederate Soldiers During the Civil War” Daniel Farrell, Kansas State University
• “PO Box 1142:  Fort Hunt, Virginia, and the American Interrogation of World War II Prisoners of War” Derek Mallett, U.S. Army Command

5:30-6:30pm – Reception 6:30 pm – Keynote Speech Paul J. Springer, Air Command and Staff College “Forgotten Casualties:  POWs in Modern Warfare”

Saturday, October 28:

9:00am- 10:30 am - Session 4:  The Search for a Usable Past:  POW Memory and Memoirs

• “Prisoner of War Memoirs of the War of 1812:  Windows Into Early Nineteenth Century Trauma” Joseph Miller, University of Maine
• “As Bad as Any:  Confederate Ex-Prisoners and their Captivity Narratives, 1865-1890” Angela Riotto, University of Akron
• “Raiders and Regulators:  Masculinity, Social Class, “Western”ness, and Food in Andersonville POW Narratives” Douglass Gardner, Indiana University

10:45am – 12:15 am - Session 5:  New Methodologies - Data Analysis, Artifacts, and the Landscapes of Captivity

• “US Civil War Curios:  How They Aided POW Survival” Beth Kruse, University of Mississippi
• “Quantifying Civil War Prisons:  Toward a Statistical and Geographical Analysis of US Civil War Prisons” William J. Kurtz, Nau Civil War Center, University of Virginia
• “Civil War Captivity in Green:  An Environmental Investigation of POW in the North” Michael Gray, East Stroudsburg University

12:15-1:00pm – Lunch

1:00 -2:30 pm- Session 6:  Prisoners and the Public - Interpreting Captivity at Historic Sites

• “At The Point of Capture:  Interpreting Prisoners of War Experience on the Battlefield” Christopher Barr, National Park Service, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park
•  “Key West’s Civil War Prisoners:  Few in Number and Overlooked in Narrative” Angela Zombek, St. Petersburg College
• “Prisoners Under Glass: Nationalism, Forgetting, and Public History at the National POW Museum” Adam Domby, College of Charleston