Counterfactual Narratives of the Civil War and Slavery

This essay examines an overlooked dimension of the American literary preoccupation with slavery since the 1970s - the mass-market genre of alternate histories of the Civil War that began to proliferate after the end of the civil rights movement. Focussing on the genre's unique blend of historical realism and counterfactual speculation, the essay argues that these novels turn to the Civil War in order to reevaluate the trajectory of US racial history and to reckon with the dramatic racial realignments of the post-civil rights period.