The Contemporary South Issue

David A. Davis is Associate Professor of English and Director of Fellowships and Scholarships at Mercer University. With Tara Powell, he co-edited Writing in the Kitchen: Essays on Southern Literature and Foodways.

Does the South still matter? A recent trend in southern studies has critiqued the existence of the South, suggesting that it is a social construction and that literary representations of the contemporary South reflect a simulacra of that social construction. These critiques undermine the myth of southern exceptionalism, to borrow the title of Matthew Lassiter and Joseph Crespino’s important collection, which suggests that the South is no longer a distinctive region of the United States. If the South is no longer a distinctive region (if it ever was), does it still produce a recognizable literature?

Requiems for the region aside, it seems that the South does still exist. Anthony Dyer Hoefer’s essay charts a rush of quantitative data that indicates that the South is the part of the United States that suffers disproportionately from social problems. The southern states rank worst in studies of poverty, obesity rates, infant mortality, literacy, healthcare access, and a host of other categories. The South is exceptional—an exceptionally bad place to live by most quantitative measures.

Contemporary southern writers depict this version of the South, one plagued with problems yet also alluring if only for personal connections to the region. Authors such as Jesmyn Ward, Larry Brown, Karen Russell, Natasha Trethewey, Kevin Young, Wiley Cash, and Tayari Jones portray the South as a complicated place, not a place of moonlight and magnolias but a place of poverty and problems. The interview with Tayari Jones in this issue illustrates the point that there is no promised land in the United States.

Clearly, southern literary studies remains a dynamic and vibrant field. As we look forward to more conversations in the near future, we also pause to reflect on the passing of an ingenious scholar who contributed provocatively to our discussions. In this issue, Rebecca Mark offers a remembrance of Patsy Yaeger, who passed away last summer. She will be dearly missed.

This will be my last issue as editor of the Newsletter. Andy Crank of the University of Alabama will be taking over what I have found to be an incredibly rewarding task. He joins a host of new officers in SSSL, including our new president, Jack Matthews, whose inaugural statement appears below.

President’s Column

John T. Matthews, President of SSSL, is Professor of English at Boston University. He is the author of several books, most recently William Faulkner: Seeing through the South.

I’m pleased to be writing my first president’s column, and want to begin by saying how honored I am to be able to serve in this office for SSSL. I hope you’ll forgive me for being a bit personal and parochial (maybe prolix, too, while we’re at it) in this initial effort.

I’d like to take the opportunity to reflect a little on what seems to be a moment of taking stock about the accomplishments of the New Southern Studies. As we’re all aware, NSS was christened by Houston Baker and Dana Nelson in their bracing call in 2001 for work in southern studies that would pursue new courses charted by brilliant scholarship already underway: they named exciting contributions by Patricia Yaeger, Richard Gray, Anne Goodwyn Jones and Susan Donaldson, and Jennifer Rae Greeson. Baker and Nelson’s summary of principal features of the movement has been taken as decisive (though of course not exhaustive): the new studies would aspire to be transnational and interdisciplinary, to examine violence to the individual body as well as the body politic inflicted by the creation of split regional, racial, and national identities, and to bear in mind the effects of global capital on local circumstances. Jon Smith and Deborah Cohn concurred with many of those aims in the influential introduction to their collection Look Away!, and recall them in a recent interview in the SSSL Newsletter with David A. Davis in the special issue on NSS in 2013. There they identify as hallmarks of the New Southern Studies work that is “informed by post-New Critical theory,” “reject[s] the ‘Solid South’ model,” and understands the “Agrarian construction of Southern identity” as an ideological fantasy that performs specific cultural work. This capacious vision has been vindicated by a torrent of revisionary studies of individual authors, major reconceptualizations of the idea of the South as an imaginary construct, the proliferation of new journals, academic and social media discussion venues, and professional colloquia. The recent conference programs of SSSL leave no doubt about our hospitality to a full variety of new methods, which join the continuing productivity of many traditional ones: post-colonial studies, gender and sexuality studies; queer studies; environmental and eco-critical studies; native American studies; trauma studies; popular culture; print culture and history of the book; critical race studies; disability studies; the black Atlantic; transatlantic Anglo-European culture; comparative hemispheric and global studies; animal studies; historical film studies; new media studies; global imperialism and world systems analysis of capitalism—and this remains a partial list.

From this current state of affairs let me move briefly backward then forward. I grew increasingly involved in SSSL as my own work on Faulkner and modernism eventually led me to reconsider his formation and situation as a southern writer—of however idiosyncratic a sort (though is there any other kind?). This new direction felt urgent for me as literary studies in the 1990s turned broadly toward a new kind of historicism, some forms of which were meant to counter post-structuralism’s insistent focus on textuality, others of which sought to incorporate such attention into consideration of the generic and rhetorical conditions of historical writing. This more sophisticated practice of historicism proved pretty productive throughout literary studies, and inspired some signal contributions to the study of southern literature: in the field I know best, I’d cite the work of Eric Sundquist, Richard Godden, and Barbara Ladd as exemplary, if diverse instances of such an approach. Work like theirs loosened the frame of southern exceptionalism by, respectively, exploring the impact of slave culture on national literature; studying the way fictions of the South exhibited the transnational dynamics of western labor and capital; and surveying the national color line in US literature as it reflected extra-national contexts. If the new historicism in American literary studies created one wave of innovative scholarship that affected our field, I suggest as well that an even earlier effort to read southern literature in the wake of the theory revolution of the 1970s also produced a significant (if circumscribed) anticipation of a full-fledged new southern studies. I remember the wonder of encountering John Irwin’s structuralist psychoanalytic account of Faulkner in the mid-1970s and feeling that a new era of Faulkner studies had opened. Coming to southern texts as something of an outsider, a modernist from the North committed to theory, I felt it was urgent to read Faulkner out of his regional context, one that had become ritualized in its attention to southern memory, community, and rural worlds lost. It was continental literary theory and Euro-American comparative studies that offered ways to do so. That this yet earlier new southern studies would not have to be confined to Faulkner’s highly plastic texts was confirmed by Jefferson Humphries’ edited collection in 1992, Southern Literature and Literary Theory, which, though it did include several essays on Faulkner, addressed numerous other southern writers as well: Mark Twain, Zora Neale Hurston, Robert Penn Warren, Grace King, Alice Walker, George Garrett, and more. It may be true that both these efforts to prod paradigm shift in southern studies had limited effects, but I think it is worth recalling that in advance of the present New Southern Studies there were significant moves toward understanding at least some southern writing in trans-regional contexts, toward disregarding the assumptions of southern exceptionalism, and toward developing analytical methods that addressed the limitations of new critical formalism and attempted to practice historical cultural studies in a genuinely bi-disciplinary way.

I don’t mean in this introductory column to suggest that SSSL and NSS are synonymous. There have been sharp differences about the agenda, originality, and consequence of NSS within SSSL and beyond. At the same time, SSSL was called a “bastion of NSS scholarship” by Brian Ward in a recent forum in the Journal of American Studies that he convened: “What’s New in Southern Studies—And Why Should We Care?” (August 2014; published on-line May 2014). I think Leigh Anne Duck’s call in the SSSL Newsletter special issue on NSS for a flexible and perpetual reinvention of southern studies is to the point: “Post-paradigm research leaves much to be tried and little to be entirely trusted. The New Southern Studies lives! Bring on the Newer Southern Studies!” The JAS forum in fact identifies several worthwhile objectives yet to be achieved in southern studies: the genuine interdisciplinary inclusion of historians in what has been largely literature-driven reconfigurations; deeper consideration of the production of regionality and the value to history of the particularity of the local; and a redressing of the relative neglect of earlier periods of US and southern history and culture.

Some of these “gaps” are standing ones familiar to us in SSSL, and our conference in Boston may provide another occasion to address them, maybe with a few twists. To what extent might studies of New World colonialism more broadly bring New England under the rubric of a past global “South,” a plantation colony that later fantasized itself as nation-North, and projected colonial relations onto its regional southern other? To what extent might we think of national US literature as a regional New England literature that became predominant? How can we encourage work that demonstrates the extent of the North’s disavowal that national prosperity rested on the foundation of plantation economy, and that white majority identity required looking away from the actualities of racial heterogeneity? Edward Baptist’s new book, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, makes the most comprehensive case yet for the extent to which national prosperity was founded on slave labor and the slave trade. It’s this sort of work that indicates one proposed objective of NSS: the eventual absorption of southern studies into American studies, at the point at which “the South” will have been resituated as the center rather than the periphery of the New World European colonial project that produced the US, among other hemispheric nation-states.

This continuing goal of recentering the southern question in national, transnational, and global studies inspires an upcoming colloquium in Vancouver on the “South in the North” organized by Jon Smith at Simon Fraser University in advance (January 5-8, 2015) of this year’s MLA convention (January 8-11). The program is posted on SSSL’s website and Facebook page.

The conversations that take place in Vancouver will also point toward our 2016 SSSL conference in Boston, to be held March 10-12 (Thursday afternoon through Saturday evening). All session meetings will take place on the campus of Boston University, and conference room rates have been arranged at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Cambridge, on the Charles River, directly across from the BU campus, and within short walking distance. As the organizing and program committees develop details, we’ll send out updated information, and post it on the SSSL website and Facebook page. Please don’t hesitate to contact me whenever you’d like about ideas or questions you may have about the conference. Our general topic will also be the South in the North, and our next step in planning the conference will be for the organizing committee to develop a full-scale description of the conference theme, issue a cfp, and invite possible plenary speakers. We welcome ideas you may have at this stage.

I’d also like to thank several outgoing officers and executive members for their recent invaluable service to SSSL. Eric Gary Anderson completed his term as President with the spectacularly successful 2014 conference in Arlington, VA at George Mason. His reward, I’m afraid, is to continue to serve on the advisory board for three more years, but, selfishly, I’ve already relied on him so much for advice that I would have had to track him down if he had achieved the seclusion he deserves. Coleman Hutchison has agreed to serve as the next president of SSSL, and will be hosting the 2018 conference in Austin. David Davis has edited the newsletter with exceptional creativity and care over the last several years; our collective thanks as he finishes his term with this issue. We’re fortunate to have Andy Crank assuming the editorship. Four members of the Executive Council have completed their terms, and I’d like to thank them very much for their contributions: Margaret Bauer, Martyn Bone, Katherine Henninger, and Barbara Ladd. It’s a pleasure to welcome our four new recently elected members, who will begin three-year terms: Deborah Barker, Katharine Burnett, Gina Caison, and Robert Jackson.

One new initiative that developed from last spring’s conference was the formation of an affiliated organization for beginning scholars in southern literary studies. This group will be called the Emerging Scholars Organization (ESO) of SSSL, and welcomes graduate students, recent PhD’s, and beginning career faculty to join. The ESO has announced a number of objectives: organizing some separate panels at SSSL (while we preserve the tradition of drawing panelists from all career stages onto the regular program); arranging for mentoring by senior scholars; organizing mock interview sessions and opportunities for other kinds of professional coaching; participating in SSSL executive council meetings; and developing a dedicated ESO webpage, to be linked at least initially to SSSL’s home page. The president of the new SSSL ESO is Stephanie Rountree. Zackary Vernon will be the ESO representative on the planning committee for the Boston 2016 conference.

Our SSSL website has some other new features. Earlier versions of the website have now been taken down, and anyone searching for “SSSL” should find our southernlit.org address as the top hit (well, maybe second behind the South Shore Soccer League). All new postings on our SSSL Facebook page are now linked to the Announcements page on the SSSL website, where you can find a running sidebar of recent Facebook activity. I remind you that there’s a page for Teaching Resources as well on the website that we keep up-to-date. We’ve also been posting all cfp’s we receive on the webpage, so please keep us informed, through Facebook or directly to me at [email protected]. Let me gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Jon Najarian, a graduate student in English at BU, who is managing the website for us.

A Qualitative Consideration of Current Quantitative Souths

Anthony Dyer Hoefer is an Assistant Professor of English and the Assistant Dean of the Honors College at George Mason University. He is the author of Apocalypse South: Judgment, Cataclysm, and the Regional Imaginary, and his current project(s) examine the relationships between place-based identities and state and local land use policies in the U.S.

Self-reflexivity is among the great joys of scholarly life. And even though – as Quentin Compson’s example suggests – interrogating one’s own southern-ness for too long might have deleterious consequences, our collective project seems to be at its most fascinating when we’re most in the weeds – when the conversation turns (and turns feisty) around the meaning of the very thing that draws us together. Despite winning the Hugh C. Holman award, Jennifer Rae Greeson’s Our South: Geographic Fantasy and the Rise of National Literature has not dominated such conversations – at least in my conference-going experience. Perhaps this is because its expansive scope does not include twentieth- and twenty-first century literature, for which our field has well-noted predilection, or perhaps because Our South was published by Harvard University Press rather one of the familiar southern studies book series.

Regardless, Our South historicizes the ongoing imagining and reimagining of the South in ways that are critical to understanding the very real consequences of these processes. The South, she writes, “is a term of the imagination, a site of national fantasy. Our South is created in and imbibed from our culture, and like any cultural construct, it means different things in different times to different people. What remains constant across U.S. history is the conceptual structure provided to us by our South: it is an internal other for the nation, an intrinsic part of the national body that nonetheless is differentiated and held apart from the whole.” (1)

The essential notion here – that the South is produced and reproduced, over and over again – is no longer contentious within the southern studies community (though to be sure, the same cannot be said of the implications that follow from this idea). For many of us, the effort to understand the various processes by which the South is made is both invigorating and liberating. This project simultaneously gets us out of the business of defending canons, sidesteps the problems of racism and parochialism, and raises the stakes of our work beyond what, in a global context, is little more than a postage stamp of territory. But when we take this definition of the South to its logical conclusion, it calls the sustainability of southern studies into question. Once the myth is exposed, what work remains? What scholarly utility does “the South” have?

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Interview with Tayari Jones

Originally from Atlanta, Tayari Jones is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers-Newark. She is the author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, which won the Hurston/Wright Award for Debut Fiction, The Untelling, and Silver Sparrow. She is currently writing a novel titled Dear History.

SSSL: What does “the South” mean to you?

Tayari Jones: When I think of “the South,” my imagination travels down pretty traditional lines. I see a map, and on this map I see Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, etc. But there is also THE SOUTH ™, which I think of the South as a sort of designation of problematic nostalgia. This is a world that doesn’t really include me, the people who say things like “we lost the war.” When I’m in such company, I sometimes quip that I don’t regard the outcome of that particular war as a loss.

But those people don’t stop me from thinking of myself as a southerner, and I didn’t take on the identity as an act resistance. This is just how I have always known myself. I’m Tayari, and I am from the South. I probably first came to think of myself in contrast to my cousins who grew up in Chicago. So for me, “the South” has much to do with the Great African American Migration. We were the ones who stayed home and made our lives here.

SSSL: In what ways in the South problematic? Is it only nostalgia or are there other issues that also complicate the South?

Tayari Jones: I’m not sure if you are asking me is the South itself problematic or is the construction of such a region a problematic concept?

I think the South itself is problematic in the way that the rest of the country is problematic. I live in New Jersey these days and spend much of my time across the water in NYC. When I tell people I am from the South, they sometimes act as though I have just escaped Georgia via the Underground Railroad! I think there is an American need to decide that racial inequality and racist violence are somehow quarantined below the Mason-Dixon. Have you noticed that when there is a racial issue in the South, it is said to have happened because it is the South. But there is so much racist police violence in New York. All the famous cases—Louima, Diallo, Bell, and just this summer, Eric Garner. But no one blames it on New York. The truth is that racism and violence is an American problem.

Now, as for the construction of “the South.” I think it’s problematic in the way that it is curated and imagined. Did you see that Vanity Fair photograph of the women writers of Atlanta? It was made to mimic Gone With the Wind. All the writers were white with the exception of Natasha Trethewey. The photo bore no resemblance to what I understand Atlanta to be—a major metropolitan city.

Someone said to me that people think southern literature is about “grandmamas and mules.” While I have nothing against grandmother and/or mules, I think it’s true that we need to modernize our ideas about what it is to be southern. But this is just one of the ways that the South is constructed. I’m sure you have seen the reality TV boom of stories about African American women in the South. Sometimes it feels like when it comes to representation, these are your choices—faux-Tara or a dystopic reality show vision.

This, I believe, is where literature steps in. In a novel, you have the time and space to deliver a true and nuanced story.

SSSL: Your novels—Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, and Silver Sparrow—are all set in Atlanta in the recent past. How do your stories of the contemporary South mediate between faux-Tara and dystopic reality show?

Tayari Jones: Truthfully, I think that’s more a question for the critics than for me. When I am writing, I have my eye on the truth, and that’s it. I don’t really think about the way that my work echoes anything else. But I will say that sometimes my characters think about what it means to live in Atlanta in this modern age, and sometimes they are trying to find their places, trying square their own observations and feelings with what they see on television. I don’t mean to be vague with my answer, but I don’t really think about my work as having a conversation with Tara, with MTV or Bravo—just as I am sure that they don’t think that they are having a conversation with me.

One thing that all of her novels share is that there is always one character who thinks that Atlanta is the black promised land. I think this is because I grew up believing that living in Atlanta (specifically southwest Atlanta) was the reward given to my generation in exchange for the sacrifices of our parents’ bravery during the civil rights movement.

It’s going to be up to someone else to decide what that means in light of media depictions.

SSSL: Is there a black promised land? If there is, would it be in the modern, urban South?

Tayari Jones: Over time, there have been many rumored promised lands. For some it was Detroit, Chicago, Washington, DC. For my family, it was Atlanta because it was the city with the most black elected officials in the 70s and 80s.

The thing is that there is no promised land, not for anyone, but the impulse to keep looking for it lets us know that we are alive.

SSSL: What works or authors would you recommend that scholars of southern literature read?

Tayari Jones: Hmm… There are just so many. I think I am going to stick with contemporary authors whom I adore. John Holman’s short story cycle, Luminous Mysteries, is a favorite, and I just heard Ravi Howard read from his forthcoming Driving the King. Attica Locke knocked my socks off with Black Water Rising and Robby Goolrich’s memoir, The End of the World as We Know It, haunts me to this day. Jim Grimsley has a new memoir coming out from Algonquin. His awesome title is How I Shed My Skin: Unlearning Racist Lessons of a Southern Childhood. I really think the writers to watch are the ones you may not have been watching. That’s how we stretch out breadth and expectations.

Patsy Yaeger, A Gargantuan-Hearted Woman

Rebecca Mark is Associate Professor of English at Tulane University and author of The Dragon’s Blood: Feminist Intertextuality in Eudora Welty’s Fiction and Ersatz America: Hidden Traces, Graphic Texts, and Mending of Democracy.

When I entered the field of southern and Welty studies professionally in the mid 1980’s, Patsy Yaeger had already published her wonderfully groundbreaking article on Eudora Welty’s “Moon Lake.” That one article proved to me that women could write feminist articles on southern literature and not just live to tell the tale but be published in the PMLA no less. That this particular scholar-role-model-mentor-friend would be as smart and sassy and fashionable and outrageous and bold and imaginative and brave and still accomplish this feat was indeed news to me. If Patsy was not going to cower and placate, then neither was I. Reading her works over the years has helped many of my women graduate students follow the path of unapologetic feminists.

When Patsy wrote Dirt and Desire, she was seeking to unveil new models for southern culture and literature, models that crossed the boundaries of gender, and sexuality, and class, and race, and dirt and desire. She said she hoped these models would be like Gertrude Stein’s Portrait of Picasso. When people told Picasso that his portrait of Gertrude Stein did not look like Gertrude, he said, “but it will.” And it did. Patsy, we want you to know that your portrait of the South looked like the South from day one and is looking more and more like it as we go. Reading all of Patsy’s articles and books, I knew that the field had been forever changed and that her keenly original perspective would encourage younger scholars forever. After the publication of Honey Mad Women and Dirt and Desire, Patsy wove her magic and turned swamps and brush, territory that we had barely been able to crawl through let alone navigate with expertise, into realms of infinitely regenerative metaphoric mosaics. We were home free. Unafraid, we entered the territory with Honey Mad and Dirt and Desire under our arms and found our own private hush harbors in the textual universe of every Southern Women Writer.

Patricia Smith Yaeger was a foremother to me and I dare say hundreds of women and men in more ways than one. Patsy was brilliant—no doubt about that. She could imagine circles around any of us, but she was first and foremost a generous academic, with a heart so big that few in the field of women studies, southern studies, feminist studies, or American studies were left untouched by this big, big, gargantuan-hearted woman. She saved and influenced my career in ways that I did not even know about for years. She wrote letters for my students recommending their work to academic presses, and anyone who has read a Patsy letter knows that she took the old stuffy citadel of academia, the ivy tower full of dust and dirt and desire and stormed it with wit, compassion, and genuine excitement for ideas. She was just that kind of person, and we will miss her in so many ways, all of them the best examples of being human.

She was smart and wise, and fully alive. Patsy’s genius and generosity opened the gates for scholars from all over the world. Her children and her husband should know that Patsy lives on not only through her books—those will be classics forever—but also through the depth of her compassion. A special thank you to all her family for sharing her with us. We will miss her and remember her always.

Emerging Scholars Organization

The SSSL Emerging Scholars Organization has had a great response so far to our call for volunteers to establish a mentoring program. Quite a bit of interest has been expressed in and support has been offered for mentorship that would provide guidance on professional and career development as well as more general guidance, not only regarding southern studies specifically but also academia in general. We are leaving specific commitments are up to individual mentors and mentees. The first round of matches will be made by the beginning of November, to give those SSSL members attending the SAMLA conference in Atlanta an opportunity to meet. SSSL-ESO is organizing a meet-up for those in Southern Studies during SAMLA, which would be a great time for pairs to meet. It will be at 7:30 pm on Saturday, 11/8, at the Bucket Shop Café (3475 Lenox Rd.), just a block from the conference hotel. All are welcome.

I will continue to make matches for mentoring on a rolling basis. If you would like to volunteer as a mentor for one or two of our emerging scholars, or if you identify as emerging scholar yourself and would like a mentor, please email me at [email protected], and I will send you more information.

Announcements

Graduate Assistant Position(s) Available:
The graduate programs at East Carolina University include the opportunity to apply for an editorial assistantship with the award-winning North Carolina Literary Review (NCLR). NCLR editorial assistants help with editing the current issue, website development, grant applications, promotional activities, and/or developing a marketing plan. Candidates should have strong writing and proofreading skills and be proficient at using Macintosh computers and Microsoft Word. Desirable additional skills (or interest in learning) include Excel, Indesign (or other desktop publishing program), web publishing, and grant-writing. For information about ECU’s graduate program, go to: http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cas/engl/graduate/index.cfm. For more information about this award-winning journal, go to: http://www.nclr.ecu.edu. Students interested in working with NCLR should contact the editor, Professor Margaret Bauer, via email ([email protected]) for more information.

Call for Submissions for the 2016 issue of the North Carolina Literary Review

The 2016 issue will celebrate 25 years of NCLR with content that reflects North Carolina’s strong tradition of a supportive community of writers. Queries and proposals for this issue may be emailed to the editor, Margaret Bauer ([email protected]). Submissions due by August 31, 2015. For formatting manuscripts for submission and online submission instructions, please consult our website: www.nclr.ecu.edu/submissions. NCLR is also always looking for book reviewers and recommendations of books to review. Read more about our book reviews at: http://www.nclr.ecu.edu/submissions/book-reviews.html.

Ernest J. Gaines Society Sessions at 2015 American Literature Association Conference

The Ernest J. Gaines Society invites proposals for papers on any aspect of the work of Ernest J. Gaines for the Gaines Society’s sessions at the American Literature Association Annual Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, May 21-24, 2015. Please send a proposal (300 to 500 words) and a short CV to Marcia Gaudet at [email protected] by January 15, 2015. All relevant proposals will be considered. For more information on the society, please see the Ernest J. Gaines Center’s website, http://ernestgaines.louisiana.edu/.

Flannery O’Connor and Other Southern Women Writers

The next O’Connor conference at Georgia College will be held 17-19 Sept. 2015. Among the creative writing presenters for this celebration will be Sarah Gordon, Sandra Meek, Laura Newbern, and Alice Friman. Among the other presenters already scheduled are Craig Amason and Evelyn White. Registration costs $150, with discounts for early registrants and for graduate students. Proposals for twenty-minute academic papers or twenty-minute creative presentations are due to [email protected] by 31 Mar. 2015. Proposals may also be mailed to Bruce Gentry, English and Rhetoric, Campus Box 44, Georgia College, Milledgeville, GA 31061. Decisions will be announced by 21 Apr. 2015. To propose an academic paper (and yes, male scholars are welcome to propose academic papers), send a 300-word abstract, or send a completed paper and a bio statement of up to 100 words. Those wishing to propose a reading or other creative presentation should send a writing sample of up to ten pages of poetry or prose and a bio statement of up to 100 words; creative presenters should have been born in or have grown up in the South; currently live in the South; or write about the South. Any requests for multimedia equipment should accompany the submission.

Study the South and the Oxford Conference for the Book Call for Papers on Margaret Walker

Study the South, a peer-reviewed, multimedia, open-access journal published by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, announces a call for papers to advance scholarship on the life and literature of Mississippi writer Margaret Walker. The author of the selected paper will be invited to discuss or present a portion of his or her work at the 2015 Oxford Conference for the Book, which will be dedicated to Walker in recognition of her contributions to American letters.

In the Literature volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Ethel Young-Minor writes, “Margaret Walker played an active role in American arts and letters for at least seven decades. She was a distinguished poet, respected essayist, groundbreaking novelist, and award-winning educator. Her final collection of poetry, This Is My Century, accurately describes the wide range of themes and issues encompassed in her work. The 20th century became Margaret Walker’s century, as she ‘saw it grow from darkness into dawn.’ Her writings demonstrate vestiges of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, traces of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and markings of what some would deem as the Womanist Renaissance of the 1980s.”

Any scholarly topic related to Walker is welcome. Study the South will have first publication rights for the article—planned for publication on March 25, 2015, the commencement of the 2015 Oxford Conference for the Book. Copyright will revert to the author six weeks after date of publication. The Center for the Study of Southern Culture and Study the South will retain, however, non-exclusive rights to publication.

To submit an original paper for consideration, please e-mail complete manuscript to James G. Thomas, Jr. at [email protected]. Submissions are due by December 1, 2014, and the successful candidate will be notified by January 15, 2015. Study the South expects that the successful candidate will be an advanced graduate student or professional scholar in a field such as literature, African American studies, American studies, gender studies, or history. Submissions will not be considered if they have been previously published or are concurrently under consideration by another journal or press.

For questions or additional information, please contact: James G. Thomas, Jr., Center for the Study of Southern Culture, [email protected], (662) 915-3374. Study the South is available via the Center’s website at http://southernstudies.olemiss.edu/publications/study-the-south.

Dr. Margaret Bauer, Dr. Roger Rulifson Awarded 2014 Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professors

On Monday, August 25, East Carolina University’s Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences broke with tradition and inducted two members of its faculty into the ranks of distinguished professor, an honor bestowed at the beginning of the academic year when a qualifying individual is chosen for the award. This year’s recipients mark the 16^th and 17^th professors chosen for the distinguished honor. Dr. Margaret Bauer, Rives Chair of Southern Literature in the Department of English and editor of the North Carolina Literary Review, and Dr. Roger Rulifson, professor in the Department of Biology and senior scientist with the ECU Institute for Coastal Science and Policy, were named the 2014 Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professors during the college’s annual faculty convocation held in Wright Auditorium. The Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professorship is the highest honor within the college and is conferred upon a professor whose career exemplifies a commitment to and a love for knowledge and academic life, as demonstrated by outstanding teaching and advising, research and creative productivity, and professional service.

SSSL Bibliography Fall 2014

Zackary Vernon, Editorial Assistant for the SSSL Newsletter, received his PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill last year. He is now a Visiting Assistant Professor of Literature and Film at Merrimack College.

Scholarly Journals
American Literary History

Anthony, David. “Fantasies of Conversion: The Sensational Jewess in Poe and Hawthorne’s America.” American Literary History 26.3 (Fall 2014): 431-461.
Wachtell, Cynthia. “The Civil War: Post-9/11.” American Literary History 26.3 (Fall 2014): 627-638.

American Literary Realism

Dixon, M. Christine Benner. “The Pain Economy: Mark Twain’s Masochistic Understanding of Pain.” American Literary Realism 47.1 (Fall 2014): 71-87.
Gazaille, Brian A. “Making a Mill of a Mouth More Productive: Efficiency and Linguistic Management in Twain’s Connecticut Yankee.” American Literary Realism 47.1 (Fall 2014): 55-70.
Howe, Lawrence. “Narrating the Tennessee Land: Real Property, Fictional Land, and Mark Twain’s Literary Enterprise.” American Literary Realism 47.1 (Fall 2014): 4-26.
Lee, Judith Yaross. “Brand Management: Samuel Clemens, Trademarks, and the Mark Twain Enterprise.” American Literary Realism 47.1 (Fall 2014): 27-54.
Wonham, Henry B. “Introduction: Mark Twain and Economy.” American Literary Realism 47.1 (Fall 2014): 1-3.

American Literature

Barnard, John Levi. “Ruins amidst Ruins: Black Classicism and the Empire of Slavery.” American Literature 86.2 (2014): 361-389.
Ellis, Cristin. “Amoral Abolitionism: Frederick Douglass and the Environmental Case against Slavery.” American Literature 86.2 (2014): 275-303.
Radus, Daniel M. “Printing Native History in David Cusick’s Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations.” American Literature 86.2 (2014): 217-243.
Schroeder, Jonathan David Shelly. “The Painting of Modern Light: Local Color before Regionalism.” American Literature 86.3 (2014): 551-581.

Appalachian Journal

Barbour, Kehren, G. Marc Bentley, Cary Curlee, Kathryn Engle, Kristin M. Hyle, Victoria Krueger, Jordan Laney, William Lindley, Joshua Roe, and Lynn Moss Sanders. “From Documentary Films to YouTube & Folkstreams: An Interview with Tom Davenport.” Appalachian Journal 41.1-2 (Fall 2013-Winter 2014): 78-100.
Blackburn, Jessie. “[E]ppalachia: Rural Ethos, Online Discourse, and Cyber-Frontiers.” Appalachian Journal 41.3-4 (Spring-Summer 2014): 214-231.
Clark, Amy D. “Letters from Home: The Literate Lives of Central Appalachian Women.” Appalachian Journal 41.1-2 (Fall 2013-Winter 2014): 54-76.
Gallamore, Jared W., Misa L. Giroux, Jo Harris, Brittany R. Hicks, Timothy C. McWilliams, William Ritter, and Patricia D. Beaver. “From Local to Global: Focus on the Interconnections: An Interview with John Gaventa.” Appalachian Journal 41.3-4 (Spring-Summer 2014): 310-333.
Gallamore, Jared W., Misa L. Giroux, Jo Harris, Brittany R. Hicks, Timothy C. McWilliams, William Ritter, Rachel Ellen Simon, David H. Walker, and Sandra L. Ballard. “Engaging in Community Transformation: An Interview with Patricia D. Beaver.” Appalachian Journal 41.3-4 (Spring-Summer 2014): 232-263.
McCarroll, Mary Anglin, Guy Larry Osborne, Beth Vanlandingham, Theresa L. Burriss, Rebecca R. Scott, Drew A. Swanson, and Chad Berry. “Roundtable Discussion of Transforming Places: Lessons from Appalachia.” Appalachian Journal 41.1-2 (Fall 2013-Winter 2014): 26-53.
Nash, Woods. “Cormac McCarthy’s Twisted Creature: Is Lester Ballard a Child of the Christian God?” Appalachian Journal 41.3-4 (Spring-Summer 2014): 334-346.
Roach, Ron. “Witch Mountains and Forgotten Doors: Place, Apocalypse, and Wilderness in the Works of Appalachian Writer Alexander Key.” Appalachian Journal 41.1-2 (Fall 2013-Winter 2014): 126-147.
Twiss, Pamela C. and Phillip J. Obermiller. “‘Civilians Came Second’: The Impact of World War II Defense Plants on African American and Appalachian Neighborhoods in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.” Appalachian Journal 41.3-4 (Spring-Summer 2014): 284-309.
Vernon, Zackary. “Commemorating vs. Commodifying: Ron Rash and the Search for an Appalachian Literary Identity.” Appalachian Journal 41.1-2 (Fall 2013-Winter 2014): 104- 124.

Callaloo

Benston, Kimberly W. “Preface to a Twenty Volume Critical Note: For Amiri, Ghost of the Future.” Callaloo 37.3 (Summer 2013): 480-482.
Bogues, Anthony Barrymore. “Mandela.” Callaloo 37.2 (Spring 2014): 185-187.
Crawford, Margo Natalie. “Baraka’s Jam Session: On the Limits of Any Attempt to Collect Black Aesthetics Unbound.” Callaloo 37.3 (Summer 2013): 477-479.
Fleming Jr., Julius B. “A Poet’s Search for Black Humanism: Requiem for Alvin Bernard Aubert.” Callaloo 37.2 (Spring 2014): 195-199.
Francis, Vievee. “Toward Breakthrough: Fool’s Gold, Quicksilver, and the Insistence of Passion.” Callaloo 37.2 (Spring 2014): 327-329.
Harris, William J. “Amiri Baraka’s Adventures with the Out & the Gone.” Callaloo 37.3 (Summer 2013): 483-485.
Howard, Ravi. “The Off-the-Page Story.” Callaloo 37.2 (Spring 2014): 343-346.
McInnis, Jarvis C. “Writing Around The Edges: A Praise Song for Wanda Coleman.” Callaloo 37.2 (Spring 2014): 189-193.
Pardlo, Gregory. “The Audacity of Self-Consciousness.” Callaloo 37.2 (Spring 2014): 304-309.
Tillet, Salamishah. “Mother Tongues & Masters of Words: Callaloo Across the Atlantic.” Callaloo 37.3 (Summer 2013): 557-562.

Christianity and Literature

Eads, Martha. “Raising the Dead in Denise Giardina’s Appalachian Fiction.” Christianity and Literature 63:1 (Autumn 2013): 75-87.

Contemporary Literature

Dore, Florence. “The New Criticism and the Nashville Sound: William Faulkner’s The Town and Rock and Roll.” Contemporary Literature 55.1 (Spring 2014): 32-57.

Early American Literature

Klein, Lauren F. “Dinner-Table Bargains: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Senses of Taste.” Early American Literature 49.2 (2014): 403-433.

The Explicator

Fox, Heather. “Resurrecting Truth in Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘The Fig Tree.’” The Explicator 72.3 (2014): 219-23.

Flannery O’Connor Review

Grant, Virginia. “Miscegenation and Communism in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘The Displaced Person.” Flannery O’Connor Review 12 (2014): 13-27.
Miller, Monica. “‘No man with a good car needs to be justified’: Preaching Roack and Roll Salvation from O’Connor’s Wise Blood to Ministry’s ‘Jesus Built My Hotrod.” Flannery O’Connor Review 12 (2014): 82-98.
Palmieri, David. “The Philosopher and the Storyteller: Eric Voegelin and Flannery O’Connor.” Flannery O’Connor Review 12 (2014): 54-69.
Shloss, Carol Loeb. “S/Kin: Writing Across Relatives.” Flannery O’Connor Review 12 (2014): 70-80.
Stevens, Jason. “John Huston’s Adaptation of Wise Blood and Hollywood’s Response to the New South.” Flannery O’Connor Review 12 (2014): 99-116.
Warren, Nagueyalti. “Introduction to Alice Walker’s ‘Convergence.’” Flannery O’Connor Review 12 (2014): 1-3.
Wiedmann, Lorna. “Flannery O’Connor’s Six Protestant Conversion Tales.” Flannery O’Connor Review 12 (2014): 33-53.

Journal of American Studies

Culbertson, Graham. “Frederick Douglass’s ‘Our National Capital’: Updating L’Enfant for an Era of Integration.” Journal of American Studies 48.4 (2014): 911-935.
Heuston, Ean. “The Most Famous Thing Robert E. Lee Never Said: Duty, Forgery, and Cultural Amnesia.” Journal of American Studies 48.4 (2014): 96-110.
Ritchie, Daniel. “Transatlantic Delusions and Pro-slavery Religion: Isaac Nelson’s Evangelical Abolitionist Critique of Revivalism in America and Ulster.” Journal of American Studies 48.3 (2014): 757-776.
Turek, Lauren Frances. “Religious Rhetoric and the Evolution of George W. Bush’s Political Philosophy.” Journal of American Studies 48.4 (2014): 975-998.
Ward, Brian. “Forum: What’s New in Southern Studies – And Why Should We Care?” Journal of American Studies 48.3 (2014): 691-733.

ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

Parks, Cecily. “The Secret Swamps in Susan Howe’s Secret History of the Dividing Line, Thorow, and Personal Narrative.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 21.2 (2014): 353-373.
Vernon, Zackary. “The Problematic History and Recent Cultural Reappropriation of Southern Agrarianism.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 21.2 (2014): 337-352.

LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory

Hubbs, Jolene. “‘She Wants It Told’: Rosa Coldfield’s Narrative Clout in Absalom, Absalom!” LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory 25.3 (Summer 2014): 242-258.

MELUS

Blackwood, Sarah. “‘Making Good Use of Our Eyes’: Nineteenth-Century African Americans Write Visual Culture.” MELUS 39.2 (Summer 2014): 42-65.
Dahn, Eurie. “‘Unashamedly Black’: Jim Crow Aesthetics and the Visual Logic of Shame.” MELUS 39.2 (Summer 2014): 93-114.
Goddu, Teresa A. “Anti-Slavery’s Panoramic Perspective.” MELUS 39.2 (Summer 2014): 12-41.
Hayman, Casey. “Hypervisible Man: Techno-Performativity and Televisual Blackness in Percival Everett’s I Am Not Sidney Poitier.” MELUS 39.3 (Fall 2014): 135-154.
Kaiserman, Adam. “James Baldwin and the Great Divide: Adapting “Equal in Paris” for Golden Age Television.” MELUS 39.3 (Fall 2014): 112-134.
Mooney, Amy M. “Seeing “As Others See Us”: The Chicago Defender Cartoonist Jay Jackson as Cultural Critic.” MELUS 39.2 (Summer 2014): 115-120.
Neary, Janet. “Representational Static: Visual Slave Narratives of Contemporary Art.” MELUS 39.2 (Summer 2014):157-187.

Mississippi Quarterly

Dewalt, Robert. “Sut Lovingood and the Germans.” The Mississippi Quarterly 65.4 (Fall 2012): 491-515.
Dupuy, Jason. “‘The piano player at the picture show’: Virgie Rainey and Navigating High and Low in The Golden Apples. The Mississippi Quarterly 65.4 (Fall 2012): 517-531.
Edwards, Laura F. “At the Threshold of the Plantation Household: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Southern Women’s History.” The Mississippi Quarterly 65.4 (Fall 2012): 577-589.
King, Vincent Allan. “‘What have you done. What have you failed to do’: Aesthetic and Moral Complacency in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men.” The Mississippi Quarterly 65.4 (Fall 2012): 533-556.
Moltke-Hansen, David. “The Turn to the South: The Influence of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese’s Southern studies.” The Mississippi Quarterly 65.4 (Fall 2012): 557-576.
Nies, Betsy. “Rattling the Cage: Homoeroticism, Sublimation, and Southern Mores in the Works of William Alexander Percy.” The Mississippi Quarterly 65.4 (Fall 2012): 465-489.
Sempreora, Margot. “Dead Women Talking: The Transgressive Manuscripts of Kate Chopin’s ‘Her Letters’ and ‘Elizabeth Stock’s One Story’” The Mississippi Quarterly 65.4 (Fall 2012): 451-463.
Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. “The Plantation Household Revisited: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese’s Contribution to Southern History.” The Mississippi Quarterly 65.4 (Fall 2012): 591-612.

Modern Fiction Studies

Malewitz, Raymond. “Narrative Disruption as Animal Agency in Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing.” Modern Fiction Studies 60.3 (Fall 2014): 544-561.
Matthews, Kadeshia L. “Black Boy No More?: Violence and the Flight from Blackness in Richard Wright’s Native Son.” Modern Fiction Studies 60.2 (Summer 2014): 276-297.

North Carolina Literary Review

Amende, Kathaleen. “Black Mountain’s Post-Apocalyptic Civil War in William Forstchen’s One Second After.” North Carolina Literary Review 23 (2014): 68-77.
Baggett, Paul. “Charles W. Chesnutt and the “Province of Literature.” North Carolina Literary Review 23 (2014): 80-94.
Cecelski, David S. “‘The Voice of the Shipyard’: Arthur Miller in Wilmington, North Carolina, 1941.” North Carolina Literary Review 23 (2014): 48-59.
Gruesser, John. “Accolades to Black Military Heroism and Fantasies of Empire in James E. McGirt’s Writings.” North Carolina Literary Review 23 (2014): 18-29.
Stave, Shirley A. “Performing the South: Lee Smith’s The Last Girls.” North Carolina Literary Review 23 (2014): 98-111.
Stone, Jordan. “A Hero’s Erran(t)d: The Grotesque, Modern Parody, and Southern Identity in Michael Malone’s Handling Sin.” North Carolina Literary Review 23 (2014): 118-136.
Vernon, Zackary. “Halloween’s Herald of Democracy: Allan Gurganus and the Horror Show of American Politics.” North Carolina Literary Review 23 (2014): 140-149.
Vernon, Zackary. “Writing the Great War: Ron Rash and Terry Roberts Discuss World War I, the North Carolina German Internment Camp, and the Historical Novel.” North Carolina Literary Review 23 (2014): 30-47.

Southern Cultures

Cooper, Christopher A., and H. Gibbs Knotts. “Partisan Change in Southern State Legislatures, 1953–2013.” Southern Cultures 20.2 (Summer 2014): 75-89.
Corriher, Donna Tolley. “Maggie and Buck: Coal Camps, Cabbage Rolls, and Community in Appalachia.” Southern Cultures 20.2 (Summer 2014): 90-99.
Draves, Ian. “‘It’s Easier to Pick a Tourist than It Is a Bale of Cotton’: The Rise of Recreation on the Great Lakes of the South.” Southern Cultures 20.3 (Fall 2014): 87-104.
Horowitz, Andy. “The BP Oil Spill and the End of Empire, Louisiana.” Southern Cultures 20.3 (Fall 2014): 6-23.
Johnson, Mark A. “The Best Notes Made the Most Votes”: W. C. Handy, E. H. Crump, and Black Music as Politics.” Southern Cultures 20.2 (Summer 2014): 52-68
Kahrl, Andrew W. “The Sunbelt’s Sandy Foundation: Coastal Development and the Making of the Modern South.” Southern Cultures 20.3 (Fall 2014): 24-42.

Southern Quarterly

Ford, Sarah Gilbreath. “‘Serious Daring’ in Eudora Welty’s ‘Powerhouse’ and ‘Where is the Voice Coming From?’” Southern Quarterly 51.3 (Spring 2014): 25-37.
Haller, Stephen E. “‘A Perpetual Business’? The Early Lumber Industry in the Piney Woods.” Southern Quarterly 51.3 (Spring 2014): 66-80.
Kemp, John R. “Rolland Golden’s Art from the Mississippi Delta to New Orleans.” Southern Quarterly 51.3 (Spring 2014): 9-24.
Morgan, Chester M. “Of Gentlemen and SOBs: The Great War and Progressivism in Mississippi.” Southern Quarterly 51.3 (Spring 2014): 51-65.
Taylor, Christin Marie. “Cultivating Desire: Black Women’s Work in George Wylie Henderson’s Ollie Miss.” Southern Quarterly 51.3 (Spring 2014): 38-50.
Wright, William. “The Fixation: A Discussion with R. T. Smith.” Southern Quarterly 51.3 (Spring 2014): 81-94.

Studies in the Novel

Ford, Sarah. “Of Trains and Relativity: Einstein and Perspective in Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding” Studies in the Novel 46.3 (2014): 354-370.
Vernon, Zackary. “‘Being Myriad, One’: Melville and the Ecological Sublime in Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses.” Studies in the Novel 46.1 (2014): 63-82.

Texas Studies in Language and Literature

Rosenthal, Debra J. “The Sentimental Appeal to Salvific Paternity in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Moby-Dick.” Texas Studies in Language and Literature 56.2 (Summer 2014): 135-147.

Academic Presses

Bloomsbury

Cofer, Jordan. The Gospel According to Flannery O’Connor. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014.

Cambridge University Press

Armstrong, Julie. The Cambridge Companion to American Civil Rights Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015.
Bohls, Elizabeth A. Slavery and the Politics of Place: Representing the Colonial Caribbean, 1770-1833. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014.
Elam, Michele. The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015.
Graham, Maryemma. A History of the African American Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014.
Matthews, John T. The New Cambridge Companion to William Faulkner. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015.
Matthews, John T. William Faulkner in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014.
Roth, Sarah N. Gender and Race in Antebellum Popular Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014.
Saddik, Annette J. Tennessee Williams and the Theatre of Excess. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015.
Upstone, Sara. Postmodern Literature and Race. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014.

Chicago University Press

Shields, David S. Southern Provisions: The Creation and Revival of a Cuisine. Chicago: Chicago UP, 2015.

Columbia University Press

Baker, Houston A, and K. Merinda Simmons. The Trouble with Post-Blackness. New York: Columbia UP, 2015.
Fuchs, Michael, and Maria-Theresia Holub, eds. Placing America: American Culture and its Spaces. New York: Columbia UP, 2013.
Irr, Caren. Toward the Geopolitical Novel: U.S. Fiction in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Columbia UP, 2013.
Washington, Mary Helen. The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s. New York: Columbia UP, 2014.

Duke University Press

Goldstein, Alyosha. Formations of United States Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.
Madera, Judith. Black Atlas: Geography and Flow in Nineteenth-Century African American Literature. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.
McGinley, Paige A. Staging the Blues: From Tent Shows to Tourism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.
Thomas, Lynnell L. Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.
Woolford, Andrew, Jeff Benvenuto, and Alexander Laban Hinton. Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.

Lavender Ink

Dixon, Nancy. N.O. Lit: 200 Years of New Orleans Literature. New Orleans: Lavender Ink, 2014.

Louisiana State University Press

Colten, Craig E. Southern Waters: The Limits to Abundance. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2014.
Fertel, Rien. Imagining the Creole City: The Rise of Literary Culture in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2014.
Haygood, Taylor. Faulkner, Writer of Disability. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2014.
Harris, M. Keith. Across the Bloody Chasm: The Culture of Commemoration among Civil War Veterans. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2014.
Huret, Romain, Randy J. Sparks, eds. Hurricane Katrina in Transatlantic Perspective. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2014.
Hyde, Jr., Samuel C., ed. The Enigmatic South: Toward Civil War and Its Legacies. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2014.
Jacobsen, Thomas W. The New Orleans: Jazz Scene, 1970–2000: A Personal Retrospective. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2014.
Salvant, Shawn. Blood Work: Imagining Race in American Literature, 1890–1940. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2014.
Sims, Barbara Barnes. The Next Elvis: Searching for Stardom at Sun Records. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2014.
Wolff, Sally. A Dark Rose: Love in Eudora Welty’s Stories and Novels. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2014.
Wynne, Ben. In Tune: Charley Patton, Jimmie Rodgers, and the Roots of American Music. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2014.

McFarland

Bauer, Margaret D., ed. Paul Green’s The House of Connelly: A Critical Edition. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014.

Ohio University Press

Campbell, Gwyn, and Elizabeth Elbourne, eds. Sex, Power, and Slavery. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 2014.
Hirsch, Susan F., and E Franklin Dukes. Mountaintop Mining in Appalachia: Understanding Stakeholders and Change in Environmental Conflict. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 2014.
Towne, Stephen E. Surveillance and Spies in the Civil War: Exposing Confederate Conspiracies in America’s Heartland. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 2014.

Oxford University Press

Li, Stephanie. Playing in the White: Black Writers, White Subjects. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014.
Naimou, Angela. Salvage Work: U.S. and Caribbean Literatures amid the Debris of Legal Personhood. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015.
Teuton, Sean. American Indian Literature: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015.

University of Alabama Press

Ford, Sarah. Tracing Southern Storytelling in Black and White. Tuscaloosa, U of Alabama P, 2014.
Picone, Michael D., and Catherine Evans Davies, eds. New Perspectives on Language Variety in the South: Historical and Contemporary Approaches. Tuscaloosa, U of Alabama P, 2015.

University of Lafayette Press

Adams, Thomas J., and Steve Striffler. Working in the Big Easy: The History and Politics of Labor in New Orleans. Lafayette: U of Lafayette P, 2014.

University of Illinois Press

Heywood, Linda, Allison Blakely, Charles Stith, and Joshua C. Yesnowitz, eds. African Americans in U.S. Foreign Policy: From the Era of Frederick Douglass to the Age of Obama. Champaign: U of Illinois P, 2015.
Lucander, David. Winning the War for Democracy: The March on Washington Movement, 1941-1946. Champaign: U of Illinois P, 2014.
Nagar, Richa. Muddying the Waters: Coauthoring Feminisms across Scholarship and Activism. Champaign: U of Illinois P, 2014.
Spalding, Susan Eike. Appalachian Dance: Creativity and Communities. Champaign: U of Illinois P, 2014.

University Press of Florida

Carlson, Amanda B., and Robin Poynor, eds. Africa in Florida: Five Hundred Years of African Presence in the Sunshine State. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2015.
Dessons, Nathalie. Creole City: A Chronicle of Early American New Orleans. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2015.
Duke, Eric D. Building a Nation: Caribbean Federation in the Black Diaspora. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2015.
Lees, William B., and Frederick P. Gaske. Recalling Deeds Immortal: Florida Monuments to the Civil War. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2014.
Shafer, Daniel L. Thunder on the River: The Civil War in Northeast Florida. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2014.

University Press of Mississippi

Anthony, Ronda C. Henry. Searching for the New Black Man: Black Masculinity and Women’s Bodies. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2014.
Brown, Carolyn J., Song of My Life: A Biography of Margaret Walker. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2014.
Harwell, Debbie Z. Wednesdays in Mississippi: Proper Ladies Working for Radical Change, Freedom Summer 1964. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2014.
Herron, Matt. Mississippi Eyes: The Story and Photography of the Southern Documentary Project. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2014.
King, Ed, and Trent Watts. Ed King’s Mississippi: Behind the Scenes of Freedom Summer. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2014.
Lurie, Peter, and Ann J. Abadie. Faulkner and Film. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2014.
Menestrel, Sara Le. Negotiating Difference in French Louisiana Music: Categories, Stereotypes, and Identifications. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2014.
Pfeffer, Miki. Southern Ladies and Suffragists: Julia Ward Howe and Women’s Rights at the 1884 New Orleans World’s Fair. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2014.
Radcliffe, Kendahl, Jennifer Scott, and Anja Werner. Anywhere But Here: Black Intellectuals in the Atlantic World and Beyond. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2014.
Sturkey, William, and Jon N. Hale, eds. To Write in the Light of Freedom: The Newspapers of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2014.

University of South Carolina Press

Bauer, Margaret Donovan. A Study of Scarletts: Scarlett O’Hara and Her Literary Daughters. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2014.
Furman, Jan. Toni Morrison’s Fiction: Revised and Expanded Edition. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2014.
Galow, Timothy W. Understanding Dave Eggers. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2014.
Gillin, Kate Côté. Shrill Hurrahs: Women, Gender, and Racial Violence in South Carolina, 1865–1900. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2014.
Lang, John. Understanding Ron Rash. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2014.
Pollack, Deborah C. Visual Art and the Urban Evolution of the New South. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2015.

Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften

Zacharasiewicz, Waldemar, and Christoph Irmscher, eds. Cultural Circulation: Dialogues between Canada and the American South. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2013.

Volume 48, Issue 2, November 2014