By Anne Halliwell

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This Sunday, Kentucky Education Television will debut “Civil War: The Untold Story,” featuring UK associate history professor Amy Murrell Taylor.

The first episode will focus on the fighting at Shiloh between Ulysses S. Grant and Union forces against Confederate forces on April 6, 1862, according to KET’s TV schedule.

“Although I love teaching at (UK) and I love my audience of students … with a topic like the Civil War, there’s always a larger audience that wants to hear more, and this was a great way for me to reach that wider audience,” Taylor said.

Taylor discusses the impact of the war on families in terms of death and dislocation, as well as the struggle to make emancipation a reality during wartime.

“The Civil War is much more than what happened on the battlefield,” said director and writer Chris Wheeler.

Wheeler said the makers of the series were looking for someone who could speak about the human experience of the Civil War on and off of the battlefield, and called Taylor “one of the stars of the show.”

Taylor has studied and taught about the subjects at hand for about 20 years, she said.

“(Taylor) really brings knowledge and expertise, but she also brings compassion to the story,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler called the series a hybrid between a documentary and a docudrama.

“The film does not shy away from showing how deadly and destructive the war was,” Taylor said. “This is not a romanticized version of the war.”

The angle of the story is also different from many projects about the Civil War, Wheeler said, as the series focuses not on Gettysburg and Shenandoah, but on battles fought between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River.

“The Western Theatre is truly where the war was won and lost,” Wheeler said.

Taylor said that there are many aspects of the Civil War that are not often discussed.

“We all know that there was this Emancipation Proclamation, this declaration,” Taylor said. “But we don’t know how it worked and how individuals … transferred to freedom during this time.”

Wheeler added that many of the issues discussed in the Civil War era, such as civil liberties, are relevant to viewers.

“The debate over the issues that divided us is still on the table today,” Wheeler said.

Taylor said she hopes that viewers will consider their roles as U.S. citizens.

“That’s what history is really all about — understanding our past and where we can go from here.”