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Beyond the Civil War Hospital understands Reconstruction as a period of emotional turmoil that precipitated a struggle for form in cultural production. By treating selected texts from that era as multifaceted contributions to Reconstruction´s "mental adaptation process" (Leslie Butler), Kirsten Twelbeck diagnoses individual conflicts between the "heart and the brain" only partly compensated for by a shared concern for national healing. By tracing each text´s unique adaptation of the healing trope, she identifies surprising disagreement over racial equality, women´s rights, and citizenship. The book pairs female and male white authors from the antislavery North, and brings together a broad range of genres.

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Kirsten Twelbeck (Prof. Dr.) teaches American Studies at the University of Regensburg. She is interested in American literature and culture from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century.

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