The Companion to Southern Literature

The Companion to Southern Literature

Author: Joseph M. Flora

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2001-11-01

Total Pages: 1096

ISBN-13: 9780807126929

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Selected as an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Selected as an Outstanding Reference Source by the Reference and User Services Association of the American Library Association There are many anthologies of southern literature, but this is the first companion. Neither a survey of masterpieces nor a biographical sourcebook, The Companion to Southern Literature treats every conceivable topic found in southern writing from the pre-Columbian era to the present, referencing specific works of all periods and genres. Top scholars in their fields offer original definitions and examples of the concepts they know best, identifying the themes, burning issues, historical personalities, beloved icons, and common or uncommon stereotypes that have shaped the most significant regional literature in memory. Read the copious offerings straight through in alphabetical order (Ancestor Worship, Blue-Collar Literature, Caves) or skip randomly at whim (Guilt, The Grotesque, William Jefferson Clinton). Whatever approach you take, The Companion’s authority, scope, and variety in tone and interpretation will prove a boon and a delight. Explored here are literary embodiments of the Old South, New South, Solid South, Savage South, Lazy South, and “Sahara of the Bozart.” As up-to-date as grit lit, K Mart fiction, and postmodernism, and as old-fashioned as Puritanism, mules, and the tall tale, these five hundred entries span a reach from Lady to Lesbian Literature. The volume includes an overview of every southern state’s belletristic heritage while making it clear that the southern mind extends beyond geographical boundaries to form an essential component of the American psyche. The South’s lavishly rich literature provides the best means of understanding the region’s deepest nature, and The Companion to Southern Literature will be an invaluable tool for those who take on that exciting challenge. Description of Contents 500 lively, succinct articles on topics ranging from Abolition to Yoknapatawpha 250 contributors, including scholars, writers, and poets 2 tables of contents — alphabetical and subject — and a complete index A separate bibliography for most entries


The Confederate States of America

The Confederate States of America

Author: Roger L. Ransom

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 9780393059670

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What if Lee had avoided defeat at Gettysburg? In the right hands the ``what if'' question can give us unusual access to the fascinations of history.


Societal Agents in Law

Societal Agents in Law

Author: Larry D. Barnett

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-01-16

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 3030020045

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In this two-volume set, Larry D. Barnett delves into the macrosociological sources of law concerned with society-important social activities in a structurally complex, democratically governed nation. Barnett explores why, when, and where particular proscriptions and prescriptions of law on key social activities arise, persist, and change. The first volume, Societal Agents in Law: A Macrosociological Approach, puts relevant doctrines of law into a macrosociological framework, uses the findings of quantitative research to formulate theorems that identify the impact of several society-level agents on doctrines of law, and takes the reader through a number of case analyses. The second volume, Societal Agents in Law: Quantitative Research, reports original multivariate statistical studies of sociological determinants of law on specific types of key social activities. Taken together, the two volumes offer an alternative to the almost-total monopoly of theory and descriptive scholarship in the macrosociology of law, comparative law, and history of law, and underscore the value of a mixed empirical/theoretical approach.


Death of a Nation

Death of a Nation

Author: David W. Noble

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 9780816640805

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In the 1940s, American thought experienced a cataclysmic paradigm shift. Before then, national ideology was shaped by American exceptionalism and bourgeois nationalism: elites saw themselves as the children of a homogeneous nation standing outside the history and culture of the Old World. This view repressed the cultures of those who did not fit the elite vision: people of color, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. David W. Noble, a preeminent figure in American studies, inherited this ideology. However, like many who entered the field in the 1940s, he rejected the ideals of his intellectual predecessors and sought a new, multicultural, postnational scholarship. Throughout his career, Noble has examined this rupture in American intellectual life. In Death of a Nation, he presents the culmination of decades of thought in a sweeping treatise on the shaping of contemporary American studies and an eloquent summation of his distinguished career. Exploring the roots of American exceptionalism, Noble demonstrates that it was a doomed ideology. Capitalists who believed in a bounded nationalism also depended on a boundless, international marketplace. This contradiction was inherently unstable, and the belief in a unified national landscape exploded in World War II. The rupture provided an opening for alternative narratives as class, ethnicity, race, and region were reclaimed as part of the nation's history. Noble traces the effects of this shift among scholars and artists, and shows how even today they struggle to imagine an alternative post-national narrative and seek the meaning of local and national cultures in an increasingly transnational world. While Noble illustrates the challenges thatthe paradigm shift created, he also suggests solutions that will help scholars avoid romanticized and reductive approaches toward the study of American culture in the future.


Calculating the Value of the Union

Calculating the Value of the Union

Author: James L. Huston

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2004-07-21

Total Pages: 413

ISBN-13: 0807861685

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While slavery is often at the heart of debates over the causes of the Civil War, historians are not agreed on precisely what aspect of slavery--with its various social, economic, political, cultural, and moral ramifications--gave rise to the sectional rift. In Calculating the Value of the Union, James Huston integrates economic, social, and political history to argue that the issue of property rights as it pertained to slavery was at the center of the Civil War. In the early years of the nineteenth century, southern slaveholders sought a national definition of property rights that would recognize and protect their ownership of slaves. Northern interests, on the other hand, opposed any national interpretation of property rights because of the threat slavery posed to the northern free labor market, particularly if allowed to spread to western territories. This impasse sparked a process of political realignment that culminated in the creation of the Republican Party, ultimately leading to the secession crisis. Deeply researched and carefully written, this study rebuts recent trends in antebellum historiography and persuasively argues for a fundamentally economic interpretation of the slavery issue and the coming of the Civil War.


A Companion to American Agricultural History

A Companion to American Agricultural History

Author: R. Douglas Hurt

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2022-05-11

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 1119632242

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Provides a solid foundation for understanding American agricultural history and offers new directions for research A Companion to American Agricultural History addresses the key aspects of America’s complex agricultural past from 8,000 BCE to the first decades of the twenty-first century. Bringing together more than thirty original essays by both established and emerging scholars, this innovative volume presents a succinct and accessible overview of American agricultural history while delivering a state-of-the-art assessment of modern scholarship on a diversity of subjects, themes, and issues. The essays provide readers with starting points for their exploration of American agricultural history—whether in general or in regards to a specific topic—and highlights the many ways the agricultural history of America is of integral importance to the wider American experience. Individual essays trace the origin and development of agricultural politics and policies, examine changes in science, technology, and government regulations, offer analytical suggestions for new research areas, discuss matters of ethnicity and gender in American agriculture, and more. This Companion: Introduces readers to a uniquely wide range of topics within the study of American agricultural history Provides a narrative summary and a critical examination of field-defining works Introduces specific topics within American agricultural history such as agrarian reform, agribusiness, and agricultural power and production Discusses the impacts of American agriculture on different groups including Native Americans, African Americans, and European, Asian, and Latinx immigrants Views the agricultural history of America through new interdisciplinary lenses of race, class, and the environment Explores depictions of American agriculture in film, popular music, literature, and art A Companion to American Agricultural History is an essential resource for introductory students and general readers seeking a concise overview of the subject, and for graduate students and scholars wanting to learn about a particular aspect of American agricultural history.


Slavery, Race and American History

Slavery, Race and American History

Author: John David Smith

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-03-04

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1317459865

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These essays introduce the complexities of researching and analyzing race. This book focuses on problems confronted while researching, writing and interpreting race and slavery, such as conflict between ideological perspectives, and changing interpretations of the questions.


A Black Gambler’s World of Liquor, Vice, and Presidential Politics

A Black Gambler’s World of Liquor, Vice, and Presidential Politics

Author: Bruce L. Mouser

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres

Published: 2014-10-30

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0299301842

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"As Mouser shows, Scott spent his life figuring out--and satisfying--men's interests with liquor, gambling, and women, and . . . [he] refused to be complicit in backing politicians who took him and the broader base of first-generation black voters for dupes. . . . Scott saw the political game for what it was: a game of power."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr.


Citizen-Scholar

Citizen-Scholar

Author: Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr.

Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press

Published: 2016-11-15

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1611177510

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A collection of essays reflecting on Edgar as friend and colleague and on the subjects of his scholarly work Citizen-Scholar comprises essays written in honor of Walter Edgar, South Carolina's preeminent historian and founding director of the University of South Carolina (USC) Institute for Southern Studies. In the opening overview of Edgar's impressive academic career, editor Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr., discusses Edgar's role as the Palmetto State's omnipresent public historian, radio program host, author of the landmark South Carolina: A History, and editor of The South Carolina Encyclopedia. The former George Washington Distinguished Professor of History, Claude Henry Neuffer Chair of Southern Studies, and Louise Fry Scudder Professor, Edgar has been recognized with inductions into the South Carolina Hall of Fame and the South Carolina Higher Education Hall of Fame and has received the South Carolina Order of the Palmetto and the South Carolina Governor's Award in the Humanities. The first section of Citizen-Scholar features personal essays about Edgar and his legacy from author and historian Winston Groom, USC vice president Mary Anne Fitzpatrick, USC president Harris Pastides, and historian Mark M. Smith. The essays that follow are written by some of the nation's most renowned scholars of southern history and culture including Charles Joyner, Andrew H. Myers, Barbara L. Bellows, John M. Sherrer III, Orville Vernon Burton, Bernard E. Powers Jr., Peter A. Coclanis, John McCardell, James C. Cobb, Amy Thompson McCandless, and Lacy K. Ford, Jr. The second section of the collection includes essays spanning a range of regional, national, and international topics, all associated with Edgar's research. These essays were written as a tribute to Edgar, both as a historian and as a public scholar, a man actively involved in his profession as well as in his community, both locally and statewide.