Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America

Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America PDF Author: Jordan J. Dominy
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496826426
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
During the Cold War, national discourse strove for unity through patriotism and political moderation to face a common enemy. Some authors and intellectuals supported that narrative by casting America’s complicated history with race and poverty as moral rather than merely political problems. Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America examines southern literature and the culture within the United States from the period just before the Cold War through the civil rights movement to show how this literature won a significant place in Cold War culture and shaped the nation through the time of Hillbilly Elegy. Tackling cultural issues in the country through subtext and metaphor, the works of authors like William Faulkner, Lillian Smith, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, and Walker Percy redefined “South” as much more than a geographical identity within an empire. The “South” has become a racially coded sociopolitical and cultural identity associated with white populist conservatism that breaks geographical boundaries and, as it has in the past, continues to have a disproportionate influence on the nation’s future and values.

Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America

Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America PDF Author: Jordan J. Dominy
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496826426
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 166

Get Book

Book Description
During the Cold War, national discourse strove for unity through patriotism and political moderation to face a common enemy. Some authors and intellectuals supported that narrative by casting America’s complicated history with race and poverty as moral rather than merely political problems. Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America examines southern literature and the culture within the United States from the period just before the Cold War through the civil rights movement to show how this literature won a significant place in Cold War culture and shaped the nation through the time of Hillbilly Elegy. Tackling cultural issues in the country through subtext and metaphor, the works of authors like William Faulkner, Lillian Smith, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, and Walker Percy redefined “South” as much more than a geographical identity within an empire. The “South” has become a racially coded sociopolitical and cultural identity associated with white populist conservatism that breaks geographical boundaries and, as it has in the past, continues to have a disproportionate influence on the nation’s future and values.

South to A New Place

South to A New Place PDF Author: Suzanne W. Jones
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807128404
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
Taking Albert Murray’s South to a Very Old Place as a starting point, contributors to this exciting collection continue the work of critically and creatively remapping the South through their freewheeling studies of southern literature and culture. Appraising representations of the South within a context that is postmodern, diverse, widely inclusive, and international, the essays present multiple ways of imagining the South and examine both new places and old landscapes in an attempt to tie the mythic southern balloon down to earth. In his foreword, an insightful discussion of numerous Souths and the ways they are perceived, Richard Gray explains one of the key goals of the book: to open up to scrutiny the literary and cultural practice that has come to be known as “regionalism.” Part I, “Surveying the Territory,” theorizes definitions of place and region, and includes an analysis of southern literary regionalism from the 1930s to the present and an exploration of southern popular culture. In “Mapping the Region,” essayists examine different representations of rural landscapes and small towns, cities and suburbs, as well as liminal zones in which new immigrants make their homes. Reflecting the contributors’ transatlantic perspective, “Making Global Connections” challenges notions of southern distinctiveness by reading the region through the comparative frameworks of Southern Italy, East Germany, Latin America, and the United Kingdom and via a range of texts and contexts—from early reconciliation romances to Faulkner’s fictions about race to the more recent parody of southern mythmaking, Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone. Together, these essays explore the roles that economic, racial, and ideological tensions have played in the formation of southern identity through varying representations of locality, moving regionalism toward a “new place” in southern studies.

Southern Culture

Southern Culture PDF Author: John J. Beck
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
From the very beginning the South was different. The source and significance of this difference has been debated and discussed for over 200 years. In recent decades, the demise of the South as a regional culture has frequently been predicted, although now some scholars and journalists are maintaining that it is proving to be remarkably resilient and is actually having an ever greater influence on the broader American culture. Southern Culture examines the origins and evolution of the region's culture and focuses on six key patterns that have defined it: agrarianism, class relations, race relations, gender and family traditions, evangelical Christianity, and political traditions. Southern Culture also explores the products of the culture with major sections on dialect, painting, architecture, pottery, music, literature, and icons and myths. It concludes with essays by each of the authors in which they reflect on where Southern culture is headed. Professors, to see an annotated list of helpful links to accompany Southern Culture, click here "Three community college instructors combine their long experience in teaching English, history, and sociology in North Carolina (Vance-Granville Community College) to provide an interdisciplinary introductory text well worth adoption. Beck, Frandsen, and Randall meet well the challenge of merging humanities and social science approaches to regional studies by examining six focal areas: race, class, politics, family, religion, and agrarianism. ... Highly recommended." - Choice Magazine ". . . a scholarly resource that also is fun to read." -- Durham Herald Sun

Southscapes

Southscapes PDF Author: Thadious M. Davis
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807835218
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
In this innovative approach to southern literary cultures, Thadious Davis analyzes how black southern writers use their spatial location to articulate the vexed connections between society and environment, particularly under segregation and its legacies.<

Defining Southern Literature

Defining Southern Literature PDF Author: John Earl Bassett
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
Defining Southern Literature delineates several phases in the story of Southern literature. Debate over what makes Southern literature different - or even Southern - goes back many decades, and among the answers has been the debate itself, a uniquely pervasive regional self-consciousness over what makes Southern culture different. Certainly no other American region has been so distinctly "marked" as the South has. Attempts to delineate the special mission, nature, problems, and virtues of Southern writers can be traced back at least to the 1830s, when editors called - with only slight success - for a sectional literature and more supportive Southern readers.

A Southern Renaissance

A Southern Renaissance PDF Author: Richard H. King
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195365305
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
This perceptive study of a major cultural movement shows how Southern writers of 1930 t0 1955 tried to come to terms with Southern tradition, and discusses the resulting body of significant literature - fiction, poetry, memoirs, and historical writing.

Remapping Southern Literature

Remapping Southern Literature PDF Author: Robert H. Brinkmeyer
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820337012
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
The fiction of Doris Betts, Barry Hannah, Cormac McCarthy, Madison Smartt Bell, Richard Ford, Rick Bass, Barbara Kingsolver, Chris Offutt, Frederick Barthelme, Dorothy Allison, and Clyde Edgerton, among others, challenges long-standing definitions of Southern fiction and regional identity and reconfigures the myths of the West that have shaped American life." "In Remapping Southern Literature, Brinkmeyer proposes that today's Southern writers are not by this shift abandoning Southern culture but are instead expanding its reach by seeking to balance the ideals of the South and West."--BOOK JACKET.

Calypso Magnolia

Calypso Magnolia PDF Author: John Wharton Lowe
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469626217
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
In this far-reaching literary history, John Wharton Lowe remakes the map of American culture by revealing the deep, persistent connections between the ideas and works produced by writers of the American South and the Caribbean. Lowe demonstrates that a tendency to separate literary canons by national and regional boundaries has led critics to ignore deep ties across highly permeable borders. Focusing on writers and literatures from the Deep South and Gulf states in relation to places including Mexico, Haiti, and Cuba, Lowe reconfigures the geography of southern literature as encompassing the "circumCaribbean," a dynamic framework within which to reconsider literary history, genre, and aesthetics. Considering thematic concerns such as race, migration, forced exile, and colonial and postcolonial identity, Lowe contends that southern literature and culture have always transcended the physical and political boundaries of the American South. Lowe uses cross-cultural readings of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers, including William Faulkner, Martin Delany, Zora Neale Hurston, George Lamming, Cristina Garcia, Edouard Glissant, and Madison Smartt Bell, among many others, to make his argument. These literary figures, Lowe argues, help us uncover new ways of thinking about the shared culture of the South and Caribbean while demonstrating that southern literature has roots even farther south than we realize.

Undead Souths

Undead Souths PDF Author: Eric Gary Anderson
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 080716108X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Examines physical, symbolic, psychological, and cultural forms of undeadness in a variety of media and historical periods.

The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture

The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture PDF Author: M. Thomas Inge
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469616645
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Book Description
Offering a comprehensive view of the South's literary landscape, past and present, this volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture celebrates the region's ever-flourishing literary culture and recognizes the ongoing evolution of the southern literary canon. As new writers draw upon and reshape previous traditions, southern literature has broadened and deepened its connections not just to the American literary mainstream but also to world literatures--a development thoughtfully explored in the essays here. Greatly expanding the content of the literature section in the original Encyclopedia, this volume includes 31 thematic essays addressing major genres of literature; theoretical categories, such as regionalism, the southern gothic, and agrarianism; and themes in southern writing, such as food, religion, and sexuality. Most striking is the fivefold increase in the number of biographical entries, which introduce southern novelists, playwrights, poets, and critics. Special attention is given to contemporary writers and other individuals who have not been widely covered in previous scholarship.