The American South

The American South
Author: William J. Cooper, Jr.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 544
Release: 2009-01-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0742564509

In The American South, William J. Cooper, Jr. and Thomas E. Terrill demonstrate their belief that it is impossible to divorce the history of the south from the history of the United States. Each volume includes a substantial biographical essay—completely updated for this edition—which provides the reader with a guide to literature on the history of the South. Coverage now includes the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, up-to-date analysis of the persistent racial divisions in the region, and the South's unanticipated role in the 2008 presidential primaries.

Away Down South

Away Down South
Author: James C. Cobb
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2005-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198025017

From the seventeenth century Cavaliers and Uncle Tom's Cabin to Civil Rights museums and today's conflicts over the Confederate flag, here is a brilliant portrait of southern identity, served in an engaging blend of history, literature, and popular culture. In this insightful book, written with dry wit and sharp insight, James C. Cobb explains how the South first came to be seen--and then came to see itself--as a region apart from the rest of America. As Cobb demonstrates, the legend of the aristocratic Cavalier origins of southern planter society was nurtured by both northern and southern writers, only to be challenged by abolitionist critics, black and white. After the Civil War, defeated and embittered southern whites incorporated the Cavalier myth into the cult of the "Lost Cause," which supplied the emotional energy for their determined crusade to rejoin the Union on their own terms. After World War I, white writers like Ellen Glasgow, William Faulkner and other key figures of "Southern Renaissance" as well as their African American counterparts in the "Harlem Renaissance"--Cobb is the first to show the strong links between the two movements--challenged the New South creed by asking how the grandiose vision of the South's past could be reconciled with the dismal reality of its present. The Southern self-image underwent another sea change in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, when the end of white supremacy shook the old definition of the "Southern way of life"--but at the same time, African Americans began to examine their southern roots more openly and embrace their regional, as well as racial, identity. As the millennium turned, the South confronted a new identity crisis brought on by global homogenization: if Southern culture is everywhere, has the New South become the No South? Here then is a major work by one of America's finest Southern historians, a magisterial synthesis that combines rich scholarship with provocative new insights into what the South means to southerners and to America as well.

Environmental History and the American South

Environmental History and the American South
Author: Paul Sutter
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 502
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 0820332801

This reader gathers fifteen of the most important essays written in the field of southern environmental history over the past decade. Ideal for course use, the volume provides a convenient entrée into the recent literature on the region as it indicates the variety of directions in which the field is growing. As coeditor Paul S. Sutter writes in his introduction, “recent trends in environmental historiography--a renewed emphasis on agricultural landscapes and their hybridity, attention to the social and racial histories of environmental thought and practice, and connections between health and the environment among them--have made the South newly attractive terrain. This volume suggests, then, that southern environmental history has not only arrived but also that it may prove an important space for the growth of the larger environmental history enterprise.” The writings, which range in setting from the Texas plains to the Carolina Lowcountry, address a multiplicity of topics, such as husbandry practices in the Chesapeake colonies and the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. The contributors’ varied disciplinary perspectives--including agricultural history, geography, the history of science, the history of technology, military history, colonial American history, urban and regional planning history, and ethnohistory--also point to the field’s vitality. Conveying the breadth, diversity, and liveliness of this maturing area of study, Environmental History and the American South affirms the critical importance of human-environmental interactions to the history and culture of the region. Contributors: Virginia DeJohn Anderson William Boyd Lisa Brady Joshua Blu Buhs Judith Carney James Taylor Carson Craig E. Colten S. Max Edelson Jack Temple Kirby Ralph H. Lutts Eileen Maura McGurty Ted Steinberg Mart Stewart Claire Strom Paul Sutter Harry Watson Albert G. Way

The History of the Book in South Asia

The History of the Book in South Asia
Author: Francesca Orsini
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1351888315

The History of the Book in South Asia covers not only the various modern states that make up South Asia today but also a multitude of languages and scripts. For centuries it was manuscripts that dominated book production and circulation, and printing technology only began to make an impact in the late eighteenth century. Print flourished in the colonial period and in particular lithographic printing proved particularly popular in South Asia both because it was economical and because it enabled multi-script printing. There are now vibrant publishing cultures in the nation states of South Asia, and the essays in this volume cover the whole range from palm-leaf manuscripts to contemporary print culture.

Slavery in the South

Slavery in the South
Author: Clayton E. Jewett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2004-02-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0313052778

Slavery in the United States is once again a topic of contention as politicians and interest groups argue about and explore the possibility of reparations. The subject is clearly not exhausted, and a state-by-state approach fills a critical reference niche. This book is the first comparative summary of the southern slave states from Colonial times to Reconstruction. The history of slavery in each state is a story based on the unique events in that jurisdiction, and is a chronicle of the relationships and interactions between its blacks and whites. Each state chapter explores the genesis, growth and economics of slavery, the life of free and enslaved blacks, the legal codes that defined the institution and affected both whites and blacks, the black experience during the Civil War, and the freedmen's struggle during Emancipation and Reconstruction. The commonalities and differences can be seen from state to state, and students and other interested readers will find fascinating accounts from ex-slaves that flesh out the fuller picture of slavery state- and country-wide. Included are timelines per state, photos, numerous tables for comparison, and appendixes on the numbers of slaveholders by state in 1860; dates of admission, secession, and readmission; and economic statistics. A bibliography and index complete the volume.

Origins of the New South, 1877–1913

Origins of the New South, 1877–1913
Author: C. Vann Woodward
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 676
Release: 1981-08-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780807100196

Winner of the Bancroft Prize After more than two decades, Origins of the New South is still recognized both as a classic in regional historiography and as the most perceptive account yet written on the period which spawned the New South. Historian Sheldon Hackney recently summed it up this way: “The pyramid still stands. Origins of the New South has survived relatively untarnished through twenty years of productive scholarship, including the eras of consensus and of the new radicalism. . . . Woodward recognizes both the likelihood of failure and the necessity of struggle. It is this profound ambiguity which makes his work so interesting. Like the myth of Sisyphus, Origins of the New South still speaks to our condition.” This enlarged edition contains a new preface by the author and a critical essay on recent works by Charles B. Dew.

A History of the Literature of the U.S. South: Volume 1

A History of the Literature of the U.S. South: Volume 1
Author: Harilaos Stecopoulos
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2021-05-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108586511

A History of the Literature of the U.S. South provides scholars with a dynamic and heterogeneous examination of southern writing from John Smith to Natasha Trethewey. Eschewing a master narrative limited to predictable authors and titles, the anthology adopts a variegated approach that emphasizes the cultural and political tensions crucial to the making of this regional literature. Certain chapters focus on major white writers (e.g., Thomas Jefferson, William Faulkner, the Agrarians, Cormac McCarthy), but a substantial portion of the work foregrounds the achievements of African American writers like Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, and Sarah Wright to address the multiracial and transnational dimensions of this literary formation. Theoretically informed and historically aware, the volume's contributors collectively demonstrate how southern literature constitutes an aesthetic, cultural and political field that richly repays examination from a variety of critical perspectives.

Southern Crossing

Southern Crossing
Author: Edward L. Ayers
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 1995-01-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190282185

Edward L. Ayers monumental history, Promise of the New South, was praised by the eminent historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown as "A work of frequently stunning beauty," who added "The elegance and sensitivity that he achieves are typical of few historical works." Winner of the James A. Rawley Prize for Best Book on American Race Relations from the Organization of American Historians, and the Frank Lawrence Owsley and Harriett Chappell Owsley Award from the Southern Historical Association, and finalist for the 1992 National Book Award, the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for History, and the 1993 Southern Book Award, Promise of the New South established Ayers as one of the foremost scholars of the American South. Now, in this newly revised edition, Ayers has distilled this remarkable work to offer an even more readable account of the New South. Ranging from the Georgia coast to the Tennessee mountains, from the power brokers to tenant farmers, Ayers depicts a land of startling contrasts--a time of progress and repression, of new industries and old ways. Ayers takes us from remote Southern towns, revolutionized by the spread of the railroads, to the statehouses where Democratic "Redeemers" swept away the legacy of Reconstruction; from the small farmers, trapped into growing nothing but cotton, to the new industries of Birmingham; from abuse and intimacy in the family to tumultuous public meetings of the prohibitionists. He explores every aspect of society, politics, and the economy, detailing the importance of each in the emerging New South. Here is the local Baptist congregation, the country store, the tobacco-stained second-class railroad car, the rise of Populism: the teeming, nineteenth-century South comes to life in these pages. And central to the entire story is the role of race relations, from alliances and friendships between blacks and whites to the spread of Jim Crow laws and disenfranchisement. Ayers weaves all these details into the contradictory story of the New South, showing how the region developed the patterns it was to follow for the next fifty years. A vivid portrait of a society undergoing the sudden confrontation of the promises, costs, and consequences of modern life, this is an unforgettable account of the New South--a land with one foot in the future and the other in the past.