| Drew Gilpin Faust, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and Lincoln Professor of History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, describes how war has claimed a preeminent place in world literature since the time of Homer and how historians, too, have shared this infatuation with war. Says Faust, "War is essentially a life-and-death matter and casts into relief people's fundamental assumptions and values."
Examining her own role as an evolving historian Faust describes coming to the study of war with the emergence of social history in the 1970s and 1980s. Prior to the emergence of social history military historians wrote about war at the level of strategy and politics. In contrast, social history focuses on how war transforms societies and individuals and the dimensions of the day-to-day aspects of military life. Lured by this level of inquiry, Faust began writing about the experience of southern slaveholding women during the American Civil War.
Social history facilitates a growing interest in women during wartime. Faust explains how the women's voices, as heard through their diaries and other writing, prompt us to ask new questions about war and, in particular, to contemplate the previously unexplored subject of death.
The riches of the Schlesinger Library help us look at these questions in a whole variety of ways. Says Faust, "History leaves us with questions answered and unanswered, but the Schlesinger Library is full of explanations for why historians are so interested in war and why all of us as human beings can find in war stories such meaningful ways to reflect on life and its possibilities and tragedies."
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