Penny Jane Hallas explains her entry for the Schweizer Jugend forscht 2022.

My name is Penny Jane Hallas

and I'm a student in Fribourg
at the Collège Saint-Michel.

My work is entitled
"When Verses Restore Virtues"

and is divided into two parts.

In the first part, I researched the ways

in which dehumanization
manifested itself in poetry

before and during the American Civil War.

In the second part,
which is a creative part,

I wrote my own poem on the topic
of dehumanization in a more personal way.

To do the research part,

I briefly familiarised myself with
the definition of dehumanization

and its different occurrences
throughout the world.

Then I researched the historical
context of antebellum America

by referring myself to
the contents of the Constitution

and the evolution
of the slave industry.

The poems I thoroughly analyzed include

"On Being Brought from Africa to America"
by Phillis Wheatley,

"Bury Me in a Free Land"
by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper,

"My Triumph Lasted Till the Drums"
by Emily Dickinson,

and an untitled poem
by George Henry Bowker.

I also drew on more Confederate poets such
as Henry Timrod and Abraham Joseph Ryan

in order to encapsulate
the wide spread of Civil War poetry

and the deferring opinions at the time.

In some ways, Civil War poetry
perpetuated the mobilization of opinion

that created a deep fundamental divide
within a nation, and, at the same time,

writers and poets became more aware of
the impact that their writings could have.

The Civil War allowed America
to renew its literary identity

that had up until then been
very strongly dependent on England.