Conversations from the Cullman Center, LIVE from NYPL: Drawing Silence: Dash Shaw with Lauren Redniss

The award-winning cartoonist and filmmaker Dash Shaw illustrates the story of a Quaker soldier who enlists in the Union Army.

During the Civil War, many Quakers were caught between their fervent support of abolition, a desire to preserve the Union, and their long-standing commitment to pacifism. In Discipline, Dash Shaw tells the story of Charles Cox, a young Quaker from Indiana, who slips out early one morning to enlist in the Union Army, scandalizing his family and community. Shaw blends fiction and history, incorporating material from actual Quaker and soldier journals, modern graphic storytelling, and Civil War–era battlefield illustrations inspired by Thomas Nast and Winslow Homer.

Dash Shaw researched and wrote Discipline during his 2014–2015 Fellowship at the Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He discusses his book with award-winning author and artist Lauren Redniss.

Produced in partnership with The Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

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• The Fighting Quakers by Augustine J.H. Duganne — NYPL Catalog
• Civil War Sketchbook: Drawings from the Battlefront by Harry L. Katz and Vincent Virga — NYPL Catalog 
• Thunder and Lightning: Weather Past, Present and Future by Lauren Redniss — NYPL Catalog 

Dash Shaw was raised Quaker in Richmond, Virginia, where he currently lives. He is the cartoonist of multiple graphic novels including Bottomless Belly Button and Clue: Candlestick,  and wrote and directed two animated feature films, the most recent of which, Cryptozoo, won the 2021 Sundance Film Festival’s NEXT Innovator Prize. Shaw began working on Discipline in 2014, and drew the book over the course of six years.

Lauren Redniss is the author of several works of visual non-fiction and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant." Her books include Radioactive, a finalist for the National Book Award, and Thunder & Lightning, winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Her most recent book is Oak Flat, which the New York Times called “virtuosic.” She has been a Guggenheim fellow, a fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars & Writers and the New America Foundation, and an Artist-in-Residence at the American Museum of Natural History. She teaches at the Parsons School of Design in New York City.

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The Cullman Center is made possible by a generous endowment from Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman in honor of Brooke Russell Astor, with major support provided by Mrs. John L. Weinberg, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Estate of Charles J. Liebman, The von der Heyden Family Foundation, John and Constance Birkelund, and The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and with additional gifts from Helen and Roger Alcaly, The Rona Jaffe Foundation, The Arts and Letters Foundation Inc., William W. Karatz, Merilee and Roy Bostock, and Cullman Center Fellows.

LIVE from NYPL is made possible by the support of Library patrons and friends, as well as by the continuing generosity of Celeste Bartos, Mahnaz Ispahani Bartos and Adam Bartos, and the Margaret and Herman Sokol Public Education Endowment Fund.