The South as an American Problem - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0820317527 ISBN 13: 9780820317526

Publisher: University of Georgia Press, 1996

Synopsis

This work discusses the modern South's image as a people and place at odds with mainstream American ideals and values. From the South's climate to its religion to its outpouring of literature, it shows why the perception of the region is refashioned by national/Southern tensions, trends and events.

About this title

Review:

Stylish essays . . . Portray and interpret a region that changed more than any other in the postwar years.

--Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Scholars have long searched for the central theme of southern history, and this volume is a major contribution to that quest.

--Charles Reagan Wilson "coeditor of The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture "

Can't we all just get along? If we ever do, will it be because the South has shown America the way? Twelve authors . . . explore that paradoxical possibility in The South As an American Problem.

--Nashville Life

A superb volume that deserves a wide readership.

--Southern Cultures

From the Back Cover:

In this volume, twelve authors take a challenging new look at the South. Departing from the issue that has lately preoccupied observers of the South - the region's waning cultural distinctiveness - the contributors instead look at the dynamics of the region's long-troubled relationship with the rest of the nation. What they discover allows us all to view the current state and future course of the South, as well as its link to the broader culture and polity, in a new light. To envision the concept of the "Problem South", and what it means to those within and without the region, six historians have joined together with a sociologist, an economist, two literary scholars, a legal scholar, and a journalist. Their essays, which range in subject from the South's climate to its religious fundamentalism to its great outpouring of fiction and autobiography, are the products of strong and independent minds that cut across disciplines, disagree among themselves, blend contemporary and historical insights, and confront conventional wisdom and expedient generalities. Although consensus among the contributors was never the goal of this collection, some common themes do suggest themselves. Above all, there is not only a South defined by its geography, history, and society, but also a mythic and metaphoric South - one continually refashioned by national/regional discourse, trends and events. In addition, the South has long been a mirror in which America has viewed itself. The nation has sought, time and again, to change the region, but it has also used the South to expose and modify darker impulses of American culture.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0820317527
• ISBN 13: 9780820317526
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 324
• Editor: Griffin Larry