In this groundbreaking study, Kathaleen E. Amende considers the works and lives of late-twentieth-century southern women writers to explore how conservative Christian ideals of femininity shaped notions of religion, sexuality, and power in the South. Drawing from the work of authors like Rosemary Daniell and Connie May Fowler, whose characters like the authors themselves grow up believing that Jesus should be a girl's first "boyfriend," Amende demonstrates many ways in which these writers commingled the sexual and the sacred. Amende also looks at the writings of Lee Smith, Sheri Reynolds,...
In this groundbreaking study, Kathaleen E. Amende considers the works and lives of late-twentieth-century southern women writers to explore how conser...
From the novels of Toni Morrison to the music of Beyonce Knowles, the cultural prevalence of a transnational black identity, as created by African American women, is more than a product of geographic mobility. Rather, as author Simone C. Drake shows, these constructions illuminate our understanding of a chronically marginalized demographic. In Critical Appropriations, Drake contends that these fluid and hetero-geneous characterizations of black females arise from multiple creative outlets -- literature, film, and music videos -- and reflect African Ameri-can women's evolving concept of...
From the novels of Toni Morrison to the music of Beyonce Knowles, the cultural prevalence of a transnational black identity, as created by African ...
Employing recent theories of memory from multiple areas of study, Possessing the Past illuminates the tangled relationships among trauma, fantasy, and the public sphere, and their impact on the "South" in imagination and in reality. Focusing on the roles that narrative and fantasy play in creating a sense of regional distinctiveness, Lisa Hinrichsen brings a wealth of critical scholarship to her consideration of memory and southern literature. Hinrichsen's nuanced readings of a diverse group of southern authors, including William Faulkner, Roberto Fernandez, Erna Brodber, Monique Truong,...
Employing recent theories of memory from multiple areas of study, Possessing the Past illuminates the tangled relationships among trauma, fantasy, and...
In this bold study of cinematic depictions of violence in the south, Deborah E. Barker explores the ongoing legacy of the "southern rape complex" in American film. Taking as her starting point D. W. Griffith's infamous The Birth of a Nation, Barker demonstrates how the tropes and imagery of the southern rape complex continue to assert themselves across a multitude of genres, time periods, and stylistic modes.
Drawing from Gilles Deleuze's work on cinema, Barker examines plot, dialogue, and camera technique as she considers several films: The Story of Temple Drake (1933), Sanctuary...
In this bold study of cinematic depictions of violence in the south, Deborah E. Barker explores the ongoing legacy of the "southern rape complex" i...
Depictions of the undead in the American South are not limited to our modern versions, such as the vampires in True Blood and the zombies in The Walking Dead. As Undead Souths reveals, physical emanations of southern undeadness are legion, but undeadness also appears in symbolic, psychological, and cultural forms, including the social death endured by enslaved people, the Cult of the Lost Cause that resurrected the fallen heroes of the Confederacy as secular saints, and mourning rites revived by Native Americans forcibly removed from the American Southeast.
To capture the manifold forms...
Depictions of the undead in the American South are not limited to our modern versions, such as the vampires in True Blood and the zombies in The Wa...
The Language of Vision celebrates and interprets the complementary expressions of photography and literature in the South. Southern imagery and text affect one another, explains Joseph R. Millichap, as intertextual languages and influential visions. Focusing on the 1930s, and including significant works both before and after this preeminent decade, Millichap uncovers fascinating convergences between mediums, particularly in the interplay of documentary realism and subjective modernism.
Millichap's subjects range from William Faulkner's fiction, perhaps the best representation of literary...
The Language of Vision celebrates and interprets the complementary expressions of photography and literature in the South. Southern imagery and tex...
Southern literature has long been heralded for its tragic sentiments, in its somber and necessary acknowledgments of the region's tormented past, as it has concomitantly asserted an overarchingly heteronormative vision of Southern life. Yet a pantheon of great authors, ranging from Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, and Truman Capote to the present-day voices of Florence King, Dorothy Allison, and David Sedaris, collectively attest both to the vibrancy of queer experience and to the prevalence of humor found in this rich regional canon. In "Precious Perversions: Humor, Homosexuality,...
Southern literature has long been heralded for its tragic sentiments, in its somber and necessary acknowledgments of the region's tormented past, a...
As the first collection dedicated to the relationship between television and the U.S. South, Small-Screen Souths addresses the growing interest in how mass culture represents the region and influences popular perceptions of it. In sixteen essays divided into three thematic sections, scholars of southern culture analyze representations of the South in a variety of television shows spanning the history of the medium, from classic network programs such as The Andy Griffith Show and Designing Women to some of today's popular franchises like Duck Dynasty and The...
As the first collection dedicated to the relationship between television and the U.S. South, Small-Screen Souths addresses the growing inter...
