UA Doctoral Alum Highlights “Peanuts” Role in D-Day Remembrance

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Blake Scott Ball

Department doctoral alum Blake Scott Ball, currently an assistant professor of history at Huntingdon College, recently published an opinion piece in the Washington Post. Ball recounts the role that Charles Schultz’s Peanuts comic strip played in shaping the popular remembrance of the D-Day Invasion.

From the June 6, 2019 edition of the Washington Post.

“How Snoopy helped us remember D-Day”

“Snoopy, who first appeared in the “Peanuts” comic strip in 1950, has been everywhere at this point: summer camp, college, the desert to visit his hapless brother Spike. He has been to the airfields of World War I in his unceasing fight with the Red Baron, and even to the moon with the crew of Apollo 10.

“He also went to Normandy, France, in a national call for remembrance and unity. And there, he became part of D-Day’s pop-culture legacy, one that has shaped Americans’ understanding of the invasion, and indeed, World War II, for decades.”

continue reading at the Washington Post website.