| Reading Southern Poverty Between the Wars, 1918-1939 Contributor(s): Godden, Richard (Editor), Crawford, Martin (Editor), Warnes, Andrew (Contribution by) |
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ISBN: 0820327085 ISBN-13: 9780820327082 Publisher: University of Georgia Press OUR PRICE: $48.40 Product Type: Hardcover Published: June 2006 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | Social History - Social Science | Poverty & Homelessness - History | United States - 20th Century |
| Dewey: 305.569 |
| LCCN: 2005036669 |
| Physical Information: 0.88" H x 6.3" W x 9.06" (1.13 lbs) 264 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Franklin D. Roosevelt once described the South as "the nation's number one economic problem." These twelve original, interdisciplinary essays on southern indigence between the World Wars share a conviction that poverty is not just a dilemma of the marketplace but also a cultural and political construction. Although previous studies have examined the web of coercive social relations in which sharecroppers, wage laborers, and other poor southerners were held in place, this volume opens up a new perspective. These essays show that professed forces of change and modernization in the South--writers, photographers, activists, social scientists, and policymakers--often subtly upheld the structures by which southern labor was being exploited. Planters, politicians, and others who enforced the southern economic and social status quo not only relied on bigotry but also manipulated deeply held American beliefs about sturdy yeoman nobility and the sanctity of farm and family. Conversely, any threats to the system were tarred with the imagery of big cities, northerners, and organized labor. The essays expose vestiges of these beliefs in sources as varied as photographs from the Farm Security Administration, statistics for incarceration and child labor, and the writings of Grace Lumpkin, Ellen Glasgow, and Erskine Caldwell. This volume shows that those who work to eradicate poverty--and even victims of poverty themselves--can hesitate to cross the line of race, gender, memory, or tradition in pursuit of their goal. |
Contributor Bio(s): Godden, Richard: - RICHARD GODDEN is a professor of American history and literature at the University of Sussex. He is the author of Fictions of Labor and Fictions of Capital.Warnes, Andrew: - ANDREW WARNES is Lecturer in American Literature and Culture at Leeds University. He is the author of Hunger Overcome? (Georgia) and Richard Wright's Native Son.Ownby, Ted: - TED OWNBY is a professor of history and southern studies at the University of Mississippi and is the director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. He is the author of American Dreams in Mississippi: Consumers, Poverty, and Culture, 1830-1998 and Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920.Crawford, Martin: - MARTIN CRAWFORD is a professor of Anglo-American history at Keele University. His books include Liberating Sojourn, Reading Southern Poverty between the Wars (both Georgia), and Ashe County's Civil War.Webb, Clive: - CLIVE WEBB is a lecturer in American history at the University of Sussex.Gray, Richard: - RICHARD GRAY is Professor of Literature at the University of Essex and the first specialist in American literature to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy. The author or editor of more than fifteen books, he is currently co-organizing a major international, collaborative research project, Transatlantic Exchanges: The South in Europe-Europe in the American South.Inscoe, John C.: - JOHN C. INSCOE is a professor of history emeritus at the University of Georgia and the founding editor of the New Georgia Encyclopedia. He is coauthor of The Heart of Confederate Appalachia.Brinkmeyer, Robert H.: - ROBERT H. BRINKMEYER JR. is professor and chair of the Department of English at the University of Arkansas. His books include Katherine Anne Porter's Artistic Development: Primitivism, Traditionalism, and Totalitarianism; The Art and Vision of Flannery O'Connor; and Three Catholic Writers of the Modern South. |