Regionalism often evokes provinciality and an affiliation with minor literary genres, but Robert Jackson shows that region is an integral part of American identity, providing grounding for major independent voices. Jackson offers a new critical model of region that contributes to literary and cultural study across a wide range of topics. He addresses American literature since the Civil War with particular attention to Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Toni Morrison. In advancing their own diverse aesthetic and social agendas -- reactionary and progressive, theological...